


if it wasn't for you, I'd be falling in and out of love

by Fionakevin073



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Based on the Tv show and book Normal People, F/M, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Mentions of Emotional Abuse, Ned Stark is a single dad, normal people reversed, still deciding how much sex will be shown
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:47:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 37,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24519442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionakevin073/pseuds/Fionakevin073
Summary: “Would you pretend not to know me?” Sansa asks, her heart shuddering at the thought. “If we bumped into each other in college?”Jon’s eyes peer into her own, and it both calms her, and makes her want to wince. When he looks at her like this, she can’t pretend. The line between who she is with her friends and who she is with him begins to blur until she doesn’t know what is real anymore, what is true. What she wants.“Sansa,” Jon says, her name sounding holy on his lips, though his eyes look a little sad. “I’d never pretend not to know you.”AU: Where Sansa and Jon fall together, then apart and repeat that cycle a few times over.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 52
Kudos: 135





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys! I've loved this ship for so long but I haven't written anything for it, which kinda surprises me. I hope people enjoy this. This story will be based very heavily on the show and book called "Normal People." I don't know just how strictly I'll be following that plot, but a lot of it will be really similar, and the gender roles are reversed in this piece. Some of the lines and scenes are similar, and I give the writers full ownership of that. 
> 
> Let me know what you guys think. I plan on fleshing out the characters a bit more in the upcoming chapters (especially since they're all so different from what we know from the show) - I think this story will have a max of ten chapters, but who knows? 
> 
> Keep safe everyone! 
> 
> Until next time,  
> Fionakevin073

Jon is staring out the window again.

Mr. Seaworth is sprouting on and on about God knows what, but Jon cannot find it within himself to care. He props his hand under his chin and stares at the trees. The wind is bellowing outside, causing the branches to swoop with the wind, green blurring the sky. He is mesmerised by the beauty of it, for one single moment.

“Mr. Snow?”

Jon doesn’t look away.

“Jon?”

He turns to stare at Mr. Seaworth with a loud sigh.

“Please refrain yourself from staring out the window during class time,” Mr. Seaworth reprimands. “You’re not doing yourself any favours.”

Jon inhales sharply but the breath lodges in his chest, refusing to come out. He grits his teeth together.

“Why?” he asks, unable to help himself.

All at once, his classmates let out small groans and sighs.

“Here he goes again,” Joffrey drawls.

Joffrey is one of the other rich kids who went to their school, but unlike Jon he’s popular and well liked, something Jon has never been. His eyes dart to Joffrey for just a moment. Jon can see a flash of red hair from the corner of his eyes, but he doesn’t turn to look at her.

“Why what, Mr. Snow?”

“Why is my staring out the window an issue?” he asks, frustrated.

Jon doesn’t see the point in this; why his eyes need to be constantly focused on Mr. Davos. He already has the highest grades in History anyway. He doesn’t like to be told what to do at every moment of every day. Doesn’t like the uniform he has to wear, the tie that makes his throat itch along with his collared shirt.

“Because you’re not paying attention, and if you don’t pay attention, you don’t learn.”

“Freaking delusional,” he hears Lora Tyrell mutter.

“I fail to see how looking out the window for a moment is going to impede my ability to learn or my grades,” Jon snaps back. He feels an intense pressure against his ears, his throat, tightening the airway.

“Mr. Snow if you don’t like the rules of my classroom you may as well leave.”

Jon stares at Mr. Seaworth a moment. He actually liked his class most days, though he was a decent enough teacher. He once gave Joffrey and Loras a detention because they tripped him in front of the classroom. Jon still remembers the echoes of everybody’s laughter when he’d tumbled to the floor, his notes flying around everywhere.

“Fine,” he says. “I wouldn’t learn much here, anyway.” He rises to his feet and swings his backpack over his shoulders.

He feels the eyes of his classmates linger on his form as he makes his way to the front door. He feels the derision in their glares, the blatant annoyance and hatred. It doesn’t make him feel anything anymore.

He pushes the door open and lets it click shut behind him.

An empty hallway greets Jon. Grey walls and floors, with shiny fluorescent lights that are all the brighter due to the grey skies outside. It makes his eyes hurt.

Jon closes his eyes tightly and feels that his real life is occurring off somewhere else, that all he is now is just an empty piece of space, waiting for something to give his life meaning.

He exhales and forces himself to walk down the hall when he hears the laughter of the class echo through the door.

-

Sansa drives to her father’s work everyday after school. He works as a gardener and cleaner for various homes around town, with even a few shifts at hotel in the town nearby, though he takes the bus for that.

On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays her dad works at the Targaryen mansion. It was one of the few mansions in Winterfell, had its own driveway and everything, far off from the main town, where her and her father lived, as well as most of her friends. Joffrey and Loras were of slightly higher class, but even they did not live in mansions like Jon did.

Sansa secretly suspects that’s part of the reason they hate him so much, but she never says that. She sighs as she makes the left turn that will lead her to the Snow house, drumming her fingers against the wheel absent mindedly as she hums.

She was tired from swim practice earlier this morning. Coach had pushed them all to the brim for the upcoming state finals. Her small Prius smells faintly of chlorine, despite the long shower she had taken after practice, with her soap that smelt of lemon and strawberries.

Sansa turns the car off after she parks outside the house. It has large, open windows that makes Sansa feel slightly unnerved, make her wonder for a great amount of time how anyone who lived there wouldn’t feel like they were on edge the entire time, or worried about someone watching them.

The idea was mildly laughable – no house was around for hundreds of miles, and she doubted that anyone would dare venture near the windows to do such a thing, even if it was for a laugh.

Sansa pulls out her pocket to text her dad she’s outside. She doesn’t venture into the house often. She waits a minute or two, curses softly when there’s no response. She said she’d meet Margaery and Jeyne at the café to discuss what dresses they were going to wear to the dance, even though it was nearly three months away. No doubt they’d gossip about who they were going to ask.

Jeyne and Margaery had thought it would be a good idea to have the dance be strictly girls ask only and seeing as they were the head of the prom committee, what they said went. Something about it being the twenty first century or something, which Sansa supposed was more than fair enough, though she secretly suspected they did it to prevent some of the more unpopular girls from going out of humiliation over not having asked anybody or been accepted.

She sighs again and climbs out the car, smoothing her skirt free of any wrinkles. She tilts her head up and inhales, the fresh smell of cut grass curling beneath her nose. The sky had cleared up, so now the sun was beating down on her forcefully.

Sansa makes her way to the door; her shoes crunching on the gravel and knocks loudly. She stares at the ground when the door opens and is startled to find Jon standing in the entryway, staring at her intensely.

“Hello,” he says calmly.

Sansa nods in return. His curly hair looks even more unruly now, his shirt rolled up to his elbows.

“Come in,” he tells her, turning his back.

Sansa follows behind him, the door falling shut. The inside is immaculate and pristine, with a few fancy paintings marking the walls. Sansa has only been in the hallway and the kitchen. She’s never seen any photos of the family hanging up anywhere; it didn’t seem like that kind of house.

“Hi Sansa,” her father says from across the island.

There’s some dirt on his tanned cheek from when he’d worked in the garden, and mud still cakes his hands, leaving an imprint on the glass of water he is holding.

“Da,” she says, giving him a small smile.

Jon has sat down again on one of the kitchens stools and has begun to scoop more ice cream into his mouth. He sucks on the spoon a little after every mouthful.

“I’ll just be a minute,” her dad says. “Gotta get cleaned up in the back first.”

They have a small guesthouse out back that they let her dad use to get cleaned up after days like these. She wonders if Jon’s father knows that her dad comes into the main house before doing so.

“I heard you did well in school,” her dad continues, slowly taking sips from his glass.

Sansa resists the urge to tap the floor impatiently.

“She did,” Jon interjects. “Got the highest grade on our practice exam for French.”

“Well done, Sansa.”

Her father’s smile is soft and makes his grey eyes crinkle at the sides.

“Can we go now?” she asks, slightly impatient.

“I didn’t know we were in a hurry.”

“I am,” she tells him. “I’m meeting up with some friends after I drop you off at home.”

“Very well.”

Her dad finishes his water with one long gulp and places his glass in the sink.

“I’ll just be a minute,” he says, and then disappears through the side kitchen door that must lead to the guest house.

The room is silent except for the small slurping sounds of Jon as he eats.

She glances at him once or twice, notices how his eyes narrow as he reads something intently in his book.

“Have you read it?” he asks, abruptly turning his gaze towards her.

Sansa is annoyed for some reason that she’s been caught.

“I can’t see what book it is.”

He lifts the book so she can see: _Far from the Madding Crowd._

“I’ve read it,” she says shortly.

“That’s no surprise,” Jon replies.

Sansa says nothing for a moment.

“Do you want some?” He gestures towards the ice cream.

“No, thanks.”

Sansa meets his gaze again. There’s a small smudge of vanilla under his lip.

“What’d you get in math?” she questions. “I got an A plus.”

“Are you bragging?” he returns, his brown eyes flashing like they do when he’s about to enter into another confrontation with someone. Sansa feels oddly flushed for a moment before he adds: “I got an A plus as well.”

“Now who’s the one bragging?”

His mouth twists up into something like a smile. Sansa think it relaxes his features, makes them look a lot less dour and brooding.

“You nervous for exams?” he asks.

Sansa shifts on her feet.

“A little,” she admits. Her brows knit together. “You have nothing to worry about,” she hears herself say. “You have the highest marks in our grade.”

“I am one of the smartest people there,” Jon says. Somehow, it doesn’t sound too arrogant, more like a fact. Sansa thinks a moment about Joffrey sneers; _thinks he’s so superior,_ he muttered often, when he saw Jon walking down the hall.

“You don’t have the highest marks in English,” she points out, unable to help herself.

Jon pauses, as if he’d almost forgotten.

“True,” he admits, not sounding upset about it. “You do. Everyone knows that.”

Sansa hadn’t really known that, to be quite honest. She tries to hide her surprise by staring down at her feet. Through the window light, her tights seem to be almost glittery.

“Sorry,” Jon says. “I didn’t mean to tattle on you to your dad or something.”

“You didn’t,” she replies, trying not to sound awkward. She’s unnerved by the intensity of his gaze, how sincerely he seems to mean everything he says.

“I need to learn a bit about that,” Jon comments beneath his breath.

“About what?”

“Human interaction.”

Sansa can’t help but laugh at that, and soon enough their laughter is filling the whole room, sounding a bit like a melody.

“I suppose this a good place to start,” she offers, feeling tense after the laughter dies, as if she’d just woken up from a dream and returned to reality.

“Yes, I suppose,” Jon agrees, closing his book. “I guess you can teach me a great deal of things.”

Sansa can feel something inside of her squeeze a little, near her chest. She wonders if he even knows how that sounded, how his words could sometimes be interpreted. He never seemed to care. He offered a great deal of scorn at school, his eyes biting and mouth ready to pour out retorts to petty remarks as easy as breathing, even if his own comments were just as vicious.

“Sorry that took so long,” her dad says, suddenly appearing through the kitchen door.

Sansa blinks suddenly, relieved at his return.

“Have a good day Jon,” her father says, just as she turns around.

“You too Ned.”

Sansa makes it a few more steps before her father clears his throat. Loudly.

“Bye Jon,” she murmurs, making her way down the hall.

Her father is quiet as she drives them back home. She keeps her eyes steadily on the road ahead of her when she feels his gaze on the side of her head.

“You should have said goodbye,” he says gently.

Sansa resists the urge to wince. She hates when her dad’s voice gets like this, all soft and slow, like he’s disappointed.

“I did,” she replies.

They drive past a few houses and fields before he speaks again.

“He doesn’t have it easy,” he tells Sansa. “His father is gone most of the time, and his sister is barely ever home. He lives all alone up in that big house, away from everybody, and I know he has a hard time at school.”

_Freaking delusional,_ Loras had called him in history earlier today. That hadn’t been the worst thing. Jon had never really had any friends, as far as Sansa knew. He was considered the weirdest boy in the entire class – the entire school, even.

“He’s sensitive,” her father goes on. Sansa almost snorts at that and nearly retorts that her dad had clearly never seen him chew someone out like he had Mr. Seaworth earlier that day. “You could try being nicer to him.”

Sansa remains quiet the entire drive home.

\--

Jon makes spaghetti for dinner that night.

He loves cooking. Has been doing it since he was twelve and had already started to get sick of heated up take-out from the night before. Rhaegar didn’t cook. Neither did Rhaenys.

He inhales as the aroma of garlic and tomato wafts through the air. He feels calm like this. Almost happy.

He has his laptop open as he eats. The window is open a tiny crack, allowing fresh air to wash over the room and get rid of the strong scent from the diffuser Rhaenys insists on having on all day. To Jon it smells a lot like medicine, but Rhaenys had merely sneered when he’d complained. _It’s not like you’re ever home,_ he’d wanted to say.

He takes another bite of his dinner as his eyes glance over the article he’s reading.

Jon tenses when he hears the sound of a car coming up the driveway. His gaze moves across the room, looking for something, anything –

He relaxes a little when it’s his father that stalks into the kitchen, briefcase in hand.

Jon feels his mouth open a little as he –

“Jon,” Rhaegar sighs loudly, his mouth twisting into a scowl. “The window is open. What’s the point of having an air con if you’re just going to open the window and let mosquitos come into the house?”

Jon feels tempted to point out that his father had new mosquito nets put in around a month ago. He stays quiet instead.

He watches Rhaegar open the fridge, reach for a bottle of open wine. He pours it with his back to Jon, his shoulders slightly curved under the tightness of his suit jacket.

“How was work?” Jon asks quietly.

Rhaegar sighs a little, rubbing at the side of his neck with one hand.

“Fine,” he replies. He turns to look at Jon, and Jon’s struck by how tired his father looks, how his uncommon violet eyes look rather close to grey. “One client leaves and another arrives, so work never ends.”

“Must mean good business,” Jon says.

His father’s stance seems to soften a little at that.

“Yes, I guess it does,” Rhaegar murmurs, running a hand through his hair.

Jon is the only dark haired one in his family. Rhaegar shares the same light blonde hair that is common to everyone else in the Targaryen family. Rhaenys has blonde hair too, though it’s slowly turned more and more light brown as she grew older, and she grew more and more bitter with it. She must have gotten that from her mother, the same way that Jon got his black hair from his.

“How was school?”

“Good,” Jon replies, taking another bite. _Freaking delusional._ “There’s leftovers in the fridge if you want.”

“Thank you, but I’ve already eaten.”

Jon nods and looks again at his screen. The silence that fills the kitchen isn’t extremely uncomfortable, but it doesn’t set him at ease either.

He almost jumps when he hears the front door open again.

_Please,_ he thinks, taking another bite of his food hurriedly, as though that would somehow make him disappear.

“Rhaenys,” Rhaegar greets. “Did you just get home?”

Jon’s eyes dart to his sister for a moment. She’s wearing a short skirt with a tight black blouse, her long hair tumbling down her shoulder. Her cheeks look a little flushed and her hazel eyes look rather unfocused.

“Yes,” she says, stepping further into the kitchen. She’s holding her heels in her hands. “I have something called a social life, unlike others.”

Jon remains silent, as does his father.

“What do you do all day?” she asks him. “Really, I’m curious. I mean, it must be rather weird, considering no one wants to be around you.”

Jon stares directly at his laptop and bites down on his lip.

“Rhaenys,” Rhaegar says, and then stops.

His sister scoffs loudly.

“Whatever,” she mutters, turning on her heel. “He’s not worth it, anyway.”

Jon’s throat feels painfully tight as he continues to stare at the bright screen, unable to lift his fork to his mouth.

He waits for his father to say something, anything.

_She’s really angry at me,_ he imagines Rhaegar confessing in the subdued golden light that fills the kitchen. _Not you. She just takes it out on you cause you’re the easier target, and she’s afraid I’ll cut her off._

Jon wonders when his sister will stop being angry at him for something, he had no control over. He hadn’t asked to be born. He hadn’t wanted Rhaegar to meet his mother wherever they had met and get her pregnant, despite the fact he had a wife – a _dying_ wife.

But all Rhaegar does is finish his wine and leave the room.

Jon looks down at the table. His hands are trembling.

\--

“Come on Sans,” Margaery is saying, lifting her cigarette to her lips. An orange light flashes and then disappears. “You still haven’t made up your mind?”

Sansa lifts her beer to her lips and shakes her head, keeping quiet.

They’re all in the park now, having met up with some of the guys from school. Jeyne is on her left and Myrcella on her right. The boys – Loras, Joffrey, Theon, Tommen and others – are off by the swings and monkey bars. Loras stumbles a little, a small groan escaping his lips.

“All the nice boys are going to have been taken up,” Jeyne sings.

Sansa resists the urge to sigh.

“Maybe,” she allows, a small laugh escaping her lips.

She feels slightly buzzed now, the beer in her hand still feels cool from the breeze.

“Any guy would love to take you darling,” Margaery says. “You’re much too quiet for your own good.”

Sansa can smell the alcohol on her breath when Margaery swoops down and plants a sloppy, wet kiss on her cheek, giggling all the while.

“You good?” Sansa asks, mildly amused.

Margarey has always been a lightweight, rather like her brother. She’s shorter than Sansa by quite a bit, having been stuck at the same height since she was in the seventh grade.

“Fantastic my darling,” Margaery drawls.

Her, Jeyne and Margaery had spent hours in the café talking about this very same topic. Margaery had thought of asking Joffrey, Jeyne had had a crush on Theon for ages now, so Sansa supposed it made sense. That left Joffrey and a few others. They’d been grilling Sansa about it continuously, but she still refused to give an answer – or at least nothing other than a non-committal shrug.

“I have to get home,” Sansa announces, after finishing her beer.

Her friends groan as she dusts off her skirt.

“No!” Margarey cries dramatically, clutching at her chest.

Sansa laughs then almost like she had in the kitchen with Jon.

The thought makes her smile ebb, just a little.

“I promised my da I’d be back for supper,” she tells them.

“You’re such a daddy’s princess,” Jeyne complains, though a fond smile plays on her lips.

Sansa shrugs and waves at the boys, calling over her shoulder: “Ta!”

She walks away from the park with the sound of her friend’s laughter echoing in her ears.

Her dad has made them lasagna, and the smell hits Sansa like a wave when she opens the door. She flips out her phone a moment, checking the camera to see if she looks too out of sorts. Her cheeks seem a little flushed, but that’s all.

She shuts the door behind her and moves through the short, narrow hall of her home. You can see a staircase from the instant you step through the threshold and it takes Sansa approximately six steps to reach the side of them, but she ignores the stairs and heads for the kitchen.

“You thought about what to put down on your applications?” her dad asks.

Sansa takes a large bite of her lasagna, her throat slightly burning from the heat.

“This is very good,” she mutters. Her dad continues to stare at her expectantly. “A little,” she admits finally, suddenly feeling a bit stressed. “I have no idea what I want to study.”

“Do your friends have any ideas?”

“Vague ones,” she says flippantly. Her eyes linger on the red tablecloth they’ve had since she was twelve. “I only know what I don’t want to study.”

“I imagine that’s quite a long list,” her dad says. He smiles at her like he’s proud. “That’s a good place to start, Sansa. Make a list of what you don’t want to study until all you have left is what you actually like. Cross out being a nuclear physicist, or something.”

“I could be a nuclear physicist,” Sansa protests softly.

Her dad shoots her a look and they both laugh like it’s the funniest thing in the world.

“I’m sure you’ll be settled soon enough,” her dad tells her, after they’ve eaten a bit more.

“Thanks,” she replies.

But she isn’t entirely reassured. Sometimes Sansa can’t even believe that she’s about to leave school, that she’s going to live in a place other than Winterfell. Sansa hasn’t ventured further than two towns over, that’s it. There are two feasible options for her – she could go to Northern Uni, where all her friends plan on going, or she could opt to broaden her horizons a little by going to Highgarden in King’s Landing.

If she goes to Northern, she’ll be set and safe, with people she’s known her whole life.

“Got studying?”

“Yeah,” she says, snapping out of her reverie. “I should go do that, actually.”

She clears her plate and helps her dad store the leftovers.

“See you,” she says, pressing a kiss to his cheek before she hurries up the stairs.

“Don’t stay up too late!” he calls after her.

Before Sansa gets out her books, her phone buzzes.

_Wished you could have stayed longer!_

It’s from Joffrey.

Sansa responds with a smiley face.

\--

It’s raining as Rhaenys drives Jon to school.

He stays quiet during the drive, careful not to do anything other than look out the window. She doesn’t drive him often. He jumps a little at the sound of her phone ringing. With one hand on the wheel, she reaches in the cupholder for her phone.

Jon resists the urge to make a comment about safe driving but bites down on it.

The radio cuts out as the call goes to speaker.

“Hey Rhaenys,” some female voice says.

“Hiya.”

“Listen could you give me a lift to work? My tire just blew out.”

“Yeah sure,” Rhaenys says.

Her voice sounds pleasant and reassuring, and it sounds foreign to Jon’s ears.

“You live down on Westmore street ya?” Rhaenys asks.

“Yes, my god, thank you girl you’re a lifesaver.”

“No worries lovely. See you in a minute.”

The calls ends before the friend can reply and Jon looks at his sister when the car pulls abruptly to a stop.

“What are you doing?” he asks, his voice sounding more timid than he would like.

Rhaenys just stares at him,

“You heard the conversation you’re not deaf,” she tells him. “Get out.”

Jon feels his mouth fall open a little.

“Rhaenys,” he says softly, pleadingly. “It’s raining, I’ll get soaked and I’ll be late. Please.”

“Just get out,” she responds, rolling her eyes. “If you learned how to drive this wouldn’t be an issue. Oh, wait, I forgot, you’re _sensitive_ about driving.”

When Jon still doesn’t move, she leans over and opens his door.

“Get. Out.”

Jon grabs a hold of his backpack and leaves the car. The rain is pouring intensely, and as Rhaenys drives off she goes through a puddle, causing one side of Jon’s clothing to be instantly soaked.

He’s already cold as he folds his arms in front of his chest and hurries on to school.

He doesn’t bother checking his phone as he walks through the front gates, shivering. He already knows he’s late, and it’s to Baelish’s class at that.

Jon knows to keep his head down as he opens the door and makes his way to his desk, interrupting what was no doubt a riveting speech about the theme of social inequality in Pride and Prejudice.

“Mr. Snow class starts at nine am sharp,” Mr. Baelish tells him.

“Look a bit like a wet rat Snow,” Joffrey calls out.

“Ever heard of something called an umbrella?” Loras adds.

Jon ignores them both as he sits down, his clothes sticking uncomfortably to his skin.

“Mr. Snow, did you hear me?”

“Yes, thanks for that,” he snaps, unable to help himself.

He hears a few people gasp a little at his tone.

“Excuse me?” Mr. Baelish’s moustache seems to twitch when his mouth moves.

“I know I’m late,” Jon replies, setting down his bag with unnecessary force. “Can you just give me a detention and get on with it?”

Baelish’s eyes flash.

“Very well,” the teacher grits out.

Baelish leaves Jon alone after that, and when he feels the eyes of the students return to the teacher, Jon leans his head down on his desk and tries to return some of the warmth in his body.

His chest hurts, like someone had stepped on it.

His mother had died in a car crash.

\--

The bag bounces against Sansa’s back as she makes her way down the hall.

The school is mostly empty since it’s afterhours. Her trainers squeak a little on the freshly mopped floors, which she feels oddly guilty about.

She makes her way down to the gym, thankful for the empty halls. Usually the boys tend to stare or whistle when she wears her shorts.

Sansa stops when she sees Jon leaning against a pillar, not yet having caught sight of her. His clothes still look crumpled from the rain, and Sansa wrinkles her nose at how uncomfortable that must have felt. There’s a book in his hands. Sansa can see the faint yellow font on the front and resists the childish urge to tell him that she’s already read it.

Jon is perhaps the strangest person that Sansa has ever met, ostracized by the whole school, and yet some part of her still wants his approval, still wants him to think that she’s smart.

“Hello,” she says, taking a step closer.

Jon’s eyes lift from the page quickly.

“You’re not heading home?” she asks, setting her bag down on the floor for a moment.

His expression turns a bit sheepish now.

“I actually did get that detention,” he admits, his ears turning a little red.

“I’m sorry about that,” she tells him. “Littlefinger can be a little in your face.”

They came up with the nickname for Mr. Baelish when they were in the ninth grade, and it still stuck.

Jon shrugs a little, straightening his posture.

“I guess I requested it, so it’s okay.”

“Hmm.”

The silence lingers between them, though it’s not entirely uncomfortable.

“How many did you get?” she asks finally.

“Detentions? Just two from Baelish. Today and tomorrow, though tomorrow is during lunch.”

“None from Seaworth?”

Jon shakes his head, a small laugh escaping his mouth. It’s not like the one he had in the kitchen; it sounds bitter, darker, like somehow his scorn has inhabited that too. Sansa wonders a moment what all his laughter’s sound like.

“No,” he admits. “He was lenient.”

“Yeah I remember how you went at him the other day,” she says. “Seemed a little unfair, he’s one of the more decent teachers. Rather nice, actually.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah.”

Jon seems to contemplate this a moment.

“I know,” he admits, his voice sounding softer than she’s ever heard it in the over ten years she’s been at school with him. “I just reject at my every movement being controlled like this is something out of an Orwell novel; we’re already told what to wear, the acceptable knowledge is drafted and prescribed by the government so I don’t know, it was just a bit frustrating, this desire to keep us in some kind of authoritarian fantasy.”

“Yeah he shouldn’t have yelled at you for looking out a window,” Sansa says. “But school isn’t just rules, and I’m sure everyone sometimes feels as you do; school is like that for everyone, it’s not unique for you just because you’ve read a few books.”

Jon doesn’t seem offended by her words, even if they were harsher than she intended.

“Ah,” he murmurs instead. “I suppose I was a bit self-righteous there, wasn’t I?”

Sansa has lost count of how many times people have called him that over the years; she’s lost count of the times she’s thought Jon was right to protest but hadn’t said anything to support him.

“A little,” she allows, trying to soften her words with a smile.

Jon begins to tap his foot on the ground.

“What were you and Baelish talking about after class?” he asks her instead.

Sansa can feel herself stiffen, just a little.

“Just about him letting me out early tomorrow so we can get more practice time in,” she replies.

“He must find training very amusing,” Jon says cryptically. “Do you fancy him? Some girls in school seem to.”

Sansa can’t help but wince in disgust.

“I don’t mean to judge if you do,” Jon says. “He just seems especially fond of you.”

“And that means I’m somehow magically fond of him?” Sansa bites back, biting the inside of her mouth.

People had been making jokes about Sansa liking Baelish since last year, and she hated it. She didn’t know what to make of his behaviour – he hadn’t done anything too weird, only laughed a lot at her jokes and told her she was especially talented at English a whole lot. If it hadn’t been for Sansa consistently having high grades in the subject since, well, ever, she would have been a bit worried.

“No,” Jon says, suddenly subdued. “It’s just you blush a lot when he talks to you.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, you blush a lot in general.”

Sansa’s gaze falls to the ground.

“You’re blushing right now, actually.”

“Thanks for that,” Sansa snaps, her gaze returning to meet his. “I appreciate it.”

Her tongue swipes along her teeth as she reaches to pick up her backpack. She feels oddly humiliated; the thought that even someone as detached from school gossip as Jon has heard this rumour worries her.

“I’m sorry,” Jon tells her.

“Do you always have to be so blunt?” Sansa asks him tiredly.

She watches as his expression flickers, like he’s experiencing thousands of things at once and his brain is malfunctioning.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he says quietly, his gaze dropping to the floor. Sansa notices his hands tightening around his book, like a lifeline. “I just. . . I know you must hate me, but you’re the only person who actually talks to me.”

He looks delicate as he says it. Sansa hasn’t ever thought of a boy as being delicate before, or fragile. They’ve always been arrogant and proud like Joffrey, or always with a sure smirk on their face like Loras. Even Tommen, who usually had a nervous expression on his features, looked secure in himself. Her father was quiet, but steady and stern too. Jon doesn’t look like any of that. His black curls fall into his eyes a little. His clothes always seem to swallow his body whole, like he doesn’t want anyone to see or notice him. His shoulders are curved a little now.

And his eyes, while kind, are filled with unsurety.

“I never said I hated you,” Sansa tells him, her throat a little raw. The words feel like they’ve been pulled out from somewhere deep down inside her.

She watches as he processes this information, and she marvels a little at how closed off he is all the time with how expressive he’s being now.

He swallows loudly, and Sansa sees his Adam’s apple move.

“Well,” he begins, sounding a lot surer of himself. “I like you.”

Sansa can hear a small _mm_ leave her lips.

A door opens from behind Jon, revealing Baelish and a few other students.

“Coming, Mr. Snow?”

Sansa watches as he reaches down for his backpack, swinging it onto his shoulders.

Their gaze holds for a moment and Sansa is overcome with this desire to flee, to escape from the intense pressure that is suddenly wrapped around her body, that he’s forced her to feel.

She turns away without replying, missing the way he smacks his head against the column, his face full of regret.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! I'm so pleased with how well people responded to the first chapter. I hope people continue on enjoying this piece. I'm really enjoying writing it. 
> 
> I know the characters seem to be really OC, but I hope everyone likes them anyway. I've come up with the rough outline for how this story will go - how much I'll incorporate from GOT and Normal People. I'm kind of using familiar characters but I'm not going to portray them like how they are in the show. 
> 
> I've tentatively placed the chapter count at 10, but I don't know. Apparently, I'm incapable of writing short and concise chapters, so who knows how long this will end up being. This story is also a challenge to write too, in many ways, but I like it. 
> 
> I hope you guys like this, and are all staying safe. 
> 
> A lot of this chapter has similarities to the show and book, Normal People. Those lines/similarities don't belong to me. 
> 
> Leave a comment if you can! 
> 
> Until next time,   
> Fionakevin073

Chapter 2

Jon has never really been to athletic events before.

Mainly because he really has no interests in athletics, and mostly because their school teams were shat. Especially their boys’ teams. Jon remembers having to watch their boys team play soccer with the rest of the school back in tenth grade; they’d lost five-nil, if he recalls correctly.

The school had never subjected them to that kind of disappointment again, until now.

It occurs to Jon how unfair it is that it was never mandatory to watch the girls compete until they’d reached a high level of competition. He has a vague notion of writing to the headmaster about it and is comforted by the notion that this is actually something most probably wouldn’t find too annoying of him to but in about.

But who knows? Jon has never really had a good grasp of what was considered to be socially acceptable or not.

Anyhow, they’ve been let out of school early so they can go and support the girls swim team at their finals. Under the new captainship, they seem to have blossomed into a team that has a decent chance of winning, at least to what little Jon overhears at school. He doesn’t fail to notice that the main champion of having their class go support the team is Mr. Baelish.

Jon reads a book on their way to the opposing school, having long since mastered the ability to read in busses and cars without getting nauseous. He bows his head down and curls into himself, leaning against the window as he reads.

There isn’t much to distract him. The people on the bus are quiet, twitching with nervous energy. The girls from the swim team sit in the back row, which Jon gathered from the blur of red he had seen before he’d abruptly sat into one of the seats close to the front.

He clutches the book tighter in his hands. In some ways he’d prefer loudness; it would distract him from the treacherous beating of his heart, the sweat making his palms clammy. The sensation makes his nose wrinkle in disgust, but Jon can’t seem to stop.

_I like you,_ he had told her, like an idiot.

That had been yesterday. Ned didn’t work at his house again until Tuesday.

He hadn’t spontaneously combusted the instant he got home, which was a nice surprise. School had not changed drastically, which meant she hadn’t told her friends. That was one less thing Jon would be bothered about. Earlier today, Jon had been a called a creep because he took his shirt off in the bathroom to wash it because he had spilt ice cream on his shirt while walking into class. It wasn’t like he’d advertised it to the world; in fact, he was pretty sure Joffrey had walked in there after he hadn’t returned to the classroom soon enough for his liking. His shirt still felt a little damp.

Jon didn’t know what rumours were spread around about him. To be perfectly honest, most days he didn’t care. It is a few weeks away from February. Jon could survive until the end of the year. He could.

He has this strange notion that his life hasn’t really started just yet. He’s been striving towards the end of school for so long that he hasn’t let himself really think about what his life will be like at university. He’ll go to Highgarden, like his father had and his before him. He knows what he wants to study. But everything else is a blur, like the concept of him having a future seems impossible.

Jon abruptly closes his book and stares out the window. The fields are a mesh of continuous green, and to the best of his knowledge they could still be in Winterfell instead of Barrowtown. It seems to him that anywhere he’s visited lacked any distinguishable features that defined that place as home.

The Barrowtown school has the same familiar bricks that serves as the foundation of Winterfell’s school as well. They’re escorted quickly to the pool area, and Jon is hit by the strong smell of chlorine that overwhelms him.

They sit in the audience and watch as lifeguards and timekeepers in white t-shirts walk across the pool deck. The opposing school sits on the other end, talking loudly amongst themselves. Some have painted faces of their school colours, green and purple.

No one from their school seemed to share the same spirit. Jon casts a quick glance among his classmates. They all seem a bit subdued by the opposing school’s enthusiasm.

It takes half an hour for the swimmers to come on deck, around fifty of them combined. Jon knew there was another school from a town over participating in the final too, but no one from their school seemed to have come. No doubt they couldn’t afford it.

Jon’s eyes scan the multiple swimmers until he catches sight of Winterfell’s school colours, grey and blue. He can’t tell who is who from a distance, and since its warm up time, he pops open his book again. He can see his classmates start to flip open their phones and talk loudly as some of the girls begin to stretch or jump in the pool.

“God, look at that arse,” Joffrey says, nudging Loras on his side.

Jon lifts his gaze for a moment to stare at Joffrey and looks to the pool deck to see some of the girls bent over, stretching. Jon bites down on his lip and looks down.

He doesn’t know how much time passes, but eventually the competition starts.

Jon looks up to the scoreboard – which does look prehistoric – and scans it for a familiar name. The relays aren’t till the end of the meet, so until then each school calls out for individual names.

“Go Alys!” Margaery was yelling.

Jon recognized Alys Karstark as a member of the liked community at school. He casts his gaze towards the pool, where the swimmers are in the midst of a race of freestyle. Jon feels his mouth twist. In the movies, these races always look fast paced and energetic, like something out of the Olympics. Reality does not mirror this – Jon is sure the swimmers are kicking and moving their arms as fast as they can, but their form sleeps sluggish, their faces red with exertion.

He wonders a moment what it’s like for them in the pool. Jon is an adequate enough swimmer, but he’s never raced before. The mere thought now makes his heart clench uncomfortably. No, Jon is not a good competitor. But he still wonders what it would be like to have your hands touch the wall first, to have people cheer your name.

It seems oddly stressful.

Jon blinks rapidly, realises that the swimmers have already left the pool, letting the new heat take their mark.

“Go Sansa!” Myrcella yells from a row or two behind him.

Jon feels like he has butterflies in his ribcage, almost licking his heart.

His eyes move off their own accord to the line of swimmers standing near the blocks. They’re all indiscernible for a moment, and then he catches sight of her. He knows it’s her before he even notices the school colours. Jon can faintly see a strand of red hair on her nape that hasn’t been covered by her cap. The goggles in her hands are grey and clear coloured.

_Go Sansa,_ he thinks. _Go._

They all climb onto the diving blocks, with one or two of the girls swaying slightly as they struggle to hold their balance.

“On your marks!”

Jon watches her bend down and hold onto the block. Her arms are taunt like a bowstring.

The sound of the whistle echoes through the room and she launches off the edge, her arms and legs tightly pressed together. For a few moments that seem to last forever, she remains out of view, until she breaks water so suddenly Jon almost gasps.

She’s swimming breaststroke now, and Jon watches as she glides through the water, up and down continuously as she makes her way to the edge. He doesn’t even notice if the other girls have caught up with her. Her shoulders hunch up to her ears and then drop back down as she falls into the water.

She looks beautiful to him, and it’s only when he hears the row behind him cry out and clap enthusiastically that Jon realises the race is over, and she’s won. He’s caught up in their joy too, so much that he can’t help but laugh and smile as well, like the mood is infectious. She’s won, and Jon watches as she pushes herself out of the pool. She pulls off her cap, her red hair pulled back into a damp ponytail.

She’s smiling, moving along her teammates and smacking their outstretched hands.

She knows what it’s like to win, to be a winner. Jon looks at the swimmers still pushing themselves out the water, their shoulders slumped with defeat.

The image is more familiar than he cares to admit.

He watches as race after race occurs, feeling like he’s in some off trance. Some people even move to sit closer to him, as if the excitement in the air has made him into somebody else unworthy of their scorn. He even claps with some of them.

When there’s a break for them all as the swimmers take some time to prepare for the final relay, Joffrey leaves him alone, even when they bump into each other at the concession stand outside in the hall.

Soon enough, they’re all back in the stands and Jon’s eyes seem to automatically find her. Her hands are curled into fists at her side. Jon can sense her anxiousness almost telepathically, even though she doesn’t even look in his direction. His stomach clenches dangerously as the first swimmers climb onto their diving blocks.

“You got this!” people from his school are yelling.

The other school is reciting their school chant. Jon feels a sense of guilt in his stomach for the school – White Harbour, he now recognises – who has no one there to cheer for them.

Jon blinks when the whistle echoes through the air, and he’s sitting on the edge of his seat as they finish their first lap. They’re pretty neck to neck all of them, and Jon feels his heart almost leap out of his throat when the second swimmers fly off the diving board. Winterfell’s swimmer – Alayne, Jon deduces from the crowd’s screams – is only a split second behind the rest. Jon watches with a sinking stomach as the gap between Winterfell and the other two schools begins to grow, so by the time they reach the last round – Sansa – the other swimmers have already reached the flags. He watches as she dives into the water effortlessly, breaking the surface a few seconds later, her arms and legs moving furiously as she -astonishingly – begins to catch up.

“Come on,” he whispers, his leg bouncing. “Come on.”

“Go Sansa!” Margaery is yelling.

Jon can faintly hear Joffrey and Loras shout some words of encouragement as well.

The gap between the girls slowly begins to close as Sansa keeps on pushing and pushing, her stroke still somehow looking elegant and purposeful. _You can do this,_ he thinks. _Come on._

And she does.

Their whole school jumps up onto their feet as her hand hits the wall, a split second before the other swimmers. Jon isn’t quite smiling, though his lips twitch, and a warmth spreads inside his chest as he watches her climb out of the pool, ripping off her camp as her and her teammates huddle close.

The swimmers turn to face the crowd, and Jon sees the happiness on her face, the redness of her cheeks, the wideness of her smile.

_I like you;_ he had told her. In this moment, his declaration doesn’t seem so sudden.

When they make their way back to the bus, students first since the swimmers are still getting ready, the air is fill of excited chattering. Even Jon, who typically is on edge in the presence of large, noisy crowds from his school, is comforted by the sound. They all seem to be momentarily bonded by this one event, as though the occurrence of victory has decimated the social hierarchy, if only for a single afternoon.

When Jon clambers onto the bus, he notices a few empty seats near the front. He could sit there again, keep his head down and be left alone. People would shuffle past him before he could even properly catch a glimpse. Jon pauses a moment near the front, weighs his options, and shuffles down the bus. No one seems to spare him a second glance. He still doesn’t push his luck; he slides into a seat near the middle and leans his head against the window.

The bus grows slowly more and more populated and Jon closes his eyes as he waits for the bus to start and the doors to close.

“Everyone settle down!” he hears Mr. Baelish call out from near the front.

Jon’s eyes drag open.

The bus seems to fill with calls of congratulations and applause as the swim team begins to move down the rows. His eyes keep forward, watching as they’re all hugged and given high fives, and then he sees her.

Her eyes seem to have faint rings around them from her goggles. Her hair is still dripping from the shower she must have taken after the meet, her sweatshirt seeming a little damp to his eyes. She stops to speak a few girls a few rows in front of him, the rest of her teammates making their way to the back.

“Darling,” Margaery sighs.

Jon feels his lips twitch at that. For someone who ridicules him for coming from a posh family, she sure likes to act she is one. But the moment of righteousness passes. He pulls his book out from his bag as she moves a little past the spot next to him.

Everyone else seems to settle into their spots. 

“Miss Stark!” Mr.Baelish calls. “Please find a seat.”

Jon doesn’t check if there’s any empty seats behind him. He tries to keep his breathing even.

“Of course, Mr. Baelish,” she replies.

There’s a moment of silence, as if she’s considering something, before she slides into the spot next to him. Jon glances at her from the corner of his eye, biting down on his bottom lip. He glances down at his lap, careful not to stare.

The people grow quiet as the bus begins to drive back to their school. Jon can hear the soft snores coming from behind him, the murmurs from a few rows up front. The air smells a little of chlorine now. He shifts a little. Some of her hair brushes against his shoulder, lightly wetting his shirt. It smells of lemon and strawberries.

He wonders for a moment if she can hear his heart beating. Jon wants to look at her, doesn’t want to be caught, and he’s torn for a few moments. He can see the blurry shape of her from the corner of his eye, looks down to see her hands curled up in her lap, pinching her grey sweatpants. They were allowed to forgo the school uniform for this occasion. Jon imagines it would be rather uncomfortable to slide into tights and a skirt with your legs still damp, not that he would know.

Jon opens his book; he’s been rereading the Harry Potter series out of a pure whim. He’s already reached the sixth one and he struggles to find where he left off. His shoulders hunch over a little as he begins to read, careful not to touch her in any way. He doesn’t know how much time passes when he feels her shift a tiny amount in his direction.

He freezes but does nothing. Jon can feel her eyes flicker in his direction a moment, before she shifts again. Jon, almost without realizing, lowers his book to his lap. _Am I bothering you?_ He wants to ask, gently. _I don’t want to annoy you._

He glances at her quickly, his lips parting. But her eyes look to his book, not to him. Jon’s gaze flickers down to his lap, understanding. He picks the book back up again, and it angles it slightly in her direction, so they both can read together without anyone noticing.

Jon feels a slight tingle in his fingers as he flips the page after a few moments. He doesn’t know if he’s moving too fast or too slow, doesn’t want to keep looking at her. He stares blankly at the page, his heartbeat racing uncomfortably. His vision seems to blur a little, rendering the text incomprehensible.

It must be a long time that he spends staring at the page, because Sansa reaches to turn it, so fast he wouldn’t thought he imagined it if it hadn’t been for her hand lightly brushing against his.

His eyes move off their own volition to stare at her, but her gaze remains fixedly on the book, flickering between that and the people around them, but never at Jon directly.

Jon bites down on his lip and returns to the book.

They stay that way the entire ride home.

\--

Sansa is late to the party she knows it, and she dreads entering the house because of it. Theon’s older sister Asha was throwing a party, and so naturally Theon invited pretty much their whole class to join as well. Sansa’s been to his house before – it’s small and narrow like hers, but with a basement, and smells quite strongly of fish. Theon’s dad worked as a fisherman; the grocery stores bought their fish from him.

Sansa can’t complain much; free booze is free booze and she figures she’s earned it. Besides, her dad had even urged her to go have fun. Ned is an admittedly relaxed parent. He knows she drinks, trusts her to take care of herself, to know her limit. He’d talked with her about it when she was fourteen, a conversation that took the better part of the day. Sex, protection, drinking, smoking, drugs.

“As long as you don’t die, get hurt, or hurt someone else, that’s all that matters,” he had finished, gently patting her hands.

Sansa has abided by that rule to the t – extreme hangovers don’t count.

As Sansa makes her way through the front door, she resists the urge to flinch. She’s still a little sore and groggy from the day’s events.

“Sansa!” Jeyne squeals.

Sansa can’t help but laugh.

“Hello,” she says, when her friend hugs her enthusiastically. “You seem to be having a good time.”

Jeyne giggles as she pulls back, her honey coloured girls falling in front of her mouth.

“You’re a star,” she informs Sansa dreamily.

“Stark!” Theon cries, magically appearing at Jeyne’s side. Sansa watches as her friend throws an arm around his waist, swaying precariously. “Good job today, yeah?”

“Thanks,” she replies, following behind as they move deeper into the house.

She recognises a lot of people from school, all of whom cheer and toast in her direction, causing her to flush.

“Can I get a drink around here or what?” she teases Theon, once they enter the kitchen.

“One shot coming right up.” He winks at her, pressing a loud kiss to Jeyne’s forehead as he bustles about the kitchen, sorting through empty red solo cups and numerous bottles of booze.

Sansa jumps when she feels an arm snake its way around her waist.

“Darling,” Margaery drawls. “You’re late.”

“Sorry, my da made dinner.”

“Of course,” Margaery sighs, twisting a curl of her blonde hair around her finger. Absentmindedly, she begins to pet Sansa’s face.

“You good there?” she asks, careful to keep an eye on Jeyne as well.

Margaery blinks rapidly, some clarity appearing in her green orbs.

“Robb is here,” she mutters.

Sansa finds Margaery’s hands.

“So are Willas and Garlan,” Margaery finishes, burying her face into Sansa’s shoulder. “They didn’t deserve you darling,” Sansa hears Margarey moan.

Sansa laughs a little. Willas Redwyne and Garlan Hightower were Margaery’s cousins – Willas from her father’s side, Garlan from her mother’s. Sansa had gone out with the two of them previously. Willas hurt a little. Garlan not at all.

“I’m alright,” she says, nudging Margarey’s head with her nose. “Are you?”

Margaery and Robb had dated for two years before he left for college. Willas and Garlan were in the same year as he. As far as Sansa knows, Robb is the only guy Margaery had ever had feelings for. She’d never really talked about how much it hurt, but Sansa had seen it in her eyes, in the way she’d gotten crueler and snappier this past year, without his calm presence to even her out.

“Of course,” Margaery says, lifting her head. “I’m a big girl, Sansa.”

Sansa is about to reply before a shot glass is pressed into her hand.

“Bottoms up,” Theon says, with Loras, Tommen and Joffrey materialising at the side of him.

“Sansa,” Joffrey says. “I almost didn’t think you’d make it.”

“Sorry bout that, but I arrived eventually.”

Margaery disentangles herself from Sansa’s side, moves to latch onto Jeyne instead.

“To you, my darling,” she exclaims, extending her drink into the air.

Sansa laughs as her friends echo the toast, and she shoots the shot back quickly, only wincing a little at the strong taste. A smile plays on her lips as a warm buzz forms in her stomach. She chats with Loras and Tommen, laughing when Theon and Jeyne stumble to the floor. It’s familiar and warm, and Sansa is happy here, with them. With these people she’s known her entire life.

Her gaze flutters about the room, falls on Robb Tully, who is talking currently with Asha Greyjoy. She wonders if she’ll be like him, and choose to go off to Highgarden, coming home once every few weeks unlike those who went to Northern, who still see their highschool friends on a weekly basis. Daily basis, more like, since they all went to the same school. Sansa imagines going to college with Margaery, Myrcella and Jeyne and she can picture how it will go exactly.

Sansa has the sudden urge to stalk across the room and ask Robb Tully if it was worth it; giving up familiar house parties for dinner parties, a small familiar world where he would undeniably do well according to everyone in town in exchange for a fancier degree in an expensive city; a whole another world entirely that consumed him to the point where he didn’t come home as often as he could or would otherwise.

The impulse fades when Joffrey grabs a hold of her hand, pulling her attention back to their friends.

\--

Jon drops his spoon when he hears the door ring. He glances down at his phone and frowns a little. He can hear the distant sounds of the lawnmower in the backyard, near the pool.

His soft footfalls echo through the hallway as he makes his way to the door and pulls it open.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hey,” Sansa replies.

She’s still in her school uniform.

“Can I come in?”

Jon’s grip on the door handle tightens a little as he blinks.

“Of course.”

He makes room for her to move inside.

“Sorry, I was just a little startled is all.”

“Are you busy?”

Jon closes the door behind them as he makes his way to the kitchen, Sansa a few steps behind him.

“No, I was just reading.”

He plops himself back down onto the stool, wiping at the counter with a napkin after picking up his spoon.

“You eat ice cream a lot.”

Jon glances at Sansa, notices her eyes lingering on the box of vanilla ice cream.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who thinks it’s too cold to eat ice cream because of the weather,” he says.

“It is January.”

“Blasphemous,” he responds, sucking on his spoon with a small pop. “It’s never too cold for ice cream.”

Sansa laughs a little, and Jon feels oddly pleased with himself. Silence lingers between them. They can’t seem to maintain eye contact for very long.

Sansa clears her throat a little. “Azkaban and Deathly Hallows were always my favourite.”

Jon manages to look at her directly now, glancing at his copy of _Deathly Hallows_ that he left on the counter.

“I always liked Phoenix best,” he replies.

“Really?”

“People always underplayed Harry’s trauma when claiming he was annoying in the book,” he retorts to her raised brows.

“Doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s seriously under edited,” she shoots back.

A small _hmph_ escapes his lips.

“Hallows would have been more memorable if Harry died.”

She’s the one to roll her eyes.

“If Harry had actually died everyone would have complained. People always want the unhappy ending whenever they don’t get it.”

“What a Ravenclaw thing to say.”

She smiles at him, tight lipped but genuine, and Jon marvels a moment at the reality of his situation; discussing Harry Potter with Sansa Stark, one of the most popular girls in his grade.

“Anyway,” she says. “It’s a shame J.K. Rowling turned out as she did, transphobic and all; I haven’t read the books for years now because of it.”

“You can enjoy the work without liking the author,” Jon hears himself say. “That’s the thing about literature; we can say fuck all to the things we don’t agree with and create something else instead with only our imagination.”

Jon notices her lips twitching.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Sansa replies. “I just don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear before.”

Jon pauses, embarrassed.

“I don’t swear often,” he admits, feeling a bit nervous now. He takes another bite of his ice cream, savouring the cold substance on his tongue.

Joffrey had once told him to yank the silver spoon out of his arse because Jon had scowled when he used the word cunt five times in one minute. Jon had counted.

“It’s up to you,” Sansa murmurs. “If you swear or don’t.”

“I don’t see the value in it all the time,” Jon admits quietly. “It sounds crass and vulgar.”

He feels his cheeks colour a little at the admission, and for a moment he wonders if he’s said too much, if he’s alienated the one person at school who shows him a modicum of awareness with his poshness and propriety.

Sansa shrugs. “Fair enough. I think it has its value, in the right time and place.”

A pause.

“Was I right?” Jon pipes up.

A small wrinkle appears between her brows as she frowns at him.

“About?”

“Your house.”

Sansa lets out a small amused sound.

“Yes,” she admits. “According to when I did it back when I was eleven. It always did strike me as weird that your entire school career was determined by the characteristics you had when you were eleven.”

“Yet another one of J.K. Rowling’s faults,” Jon supplies.

“Yeah. I guess.” She’s quiet a moment before she tilts her head. “Let me guess,” she says, a smile toying on her lips. “Slytherin?”

“Is that obvious?”

“A little.”

Jon is the one who laughs now. It sounds slightly startled, like it’d been yanked out of his lungs.

“Percy Jackson is better,” she says. “I know that’s an unpopular opinion.”

“Rick Riordan does understand the concept of diversity and representation,” Jon agrees.

They grin at each other – or, more accurately, they both grin at the same time, but stare determinedly at the ground instead.

“I didn’t know you read those kinds of books,” Sansa tells him.

Jon feels his spine grow a little straighter.

“Why?” he jests. “Surprised that I don’t spend all my time reading about politics and the development of Sigmund Freud?” The words sound a tad defensive, more so than he cares to admit. It sounds like he’s back in school.

“Honestly?” she asks. “A little. You do seem more into the serious stuff.”

Jon observes her carefully. There appears to be no malice in her eyes, though her stance does seem a bit awkward.

“I suppose I care about the world as a whole and not just the one around me.”

Their gazes lock.

“That’s fair,” she says.

Jon jumps when the door near the back of the kitchen opens, revealing a freshly washed up Ned. He seems a little surprised at the sight of his daughter.

“Sansa,” Ned states, swinging his bag over his shoulders. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“I texted you.”

“Sorry about that, I must not have seen it.”

Ned turns to face Jon, offering him a wide smile.

“I’ll see you tomorrow lad,” he tells him.

Jon can’t help but smile back.

“See you then.”

The father and daughter duo make their way out of the kitchen.

“Bye.”

Jon snaps his gaze, but she’s already turned her back to him. He hears the door close a few seconds later, and he’s left with a pleasurable humming near his heart, spreading through his chest.

\--

They’re sitting in the school cafeteria, talking quietly amongst themselves, when Joffrey starts.

Sansa tries to ignore it at first, but once he starts it’s hard to pretend it isn’t happening.

“Jon,” Joffrey calls out. “What you reading?”

Sansa glances at Joffrey, plays with one her grapes absent mindedly. The whole table has quietened to only mere whispers of conversation as they watch their blonde-haired leader toss his hair back as he starts. Sansa wonders what possesses him in moments like these; he’ll be smiling and relatively decent, and then all of a sudden, a smirk will plaster onto his lips, making his features look arrogant and cruel, as if in a permanent sneer.

Sansa looks over at Jon, sitting at the table across from them. He’s alone, as per usual, quietly drinking from his juice box as he reads. Sansa wonders a moment if he’s done with _Deathly Hallows._

“Come on, you can talk, I’m just asking.”

Jon doesn’t even lift his gaze as far as Sansa can tell. She can sense Joffrey’s agitation, witnesses his nostrils flaring at the lack of response.

“What? You think you’re that much better than us that you can’t respond to a single question?”

Sansa watches Jon shift a little in his chair. He stretches his neck, as if to smooth out a cramp. She can only see the dull bluish green of his book cover as he holds it in his hands, covering the title.

“Jesus fuck, you’re weird,” Joffrey says. “Just strange, really.”

Jon places his juicebox down on the table, but as he does, he loses balance of the book in his hands, causing it to fall to the floor. He bends down to pick it up before Joffrey can think of doing so, but not before Sansa catches sight of the title.

_Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief._

Sansa has the sudden urge to bolt. Her bones tremble as she hastily stands up, her chair scraping against the floor.

“I’m going to get some more crisps, does anyone want anything?” she asks.

The world around her has started to blur around the edges, just a little. Joffrey turns to look at her.

“I’m good,” he tells her.

Sansa listens remotely to Margaery’s and Jeyne’s requests, lowers her gaze when she catches sight of Myrcella’s curious expression. She walks away, but not before she hears Joffrey continue right where he left off.

-

Sansa sits in her car for a long time after she parks in the Targaryen mansion’s driveway. She checks the clock every little while and is frustrated when the time seems to have frozen still.

“Damn it,” she swears, tapping her hands on the wheel. Her dad doesn’t finish for another ten minutes. She has the sudden urge to leave, to drive home and fall asleep, leaving her dad to take the bus or a taxi, like he always had before she’d saved enough money to buy her car. Sansa works as a swim instructor for kids in Winterfell and other nearby towns, and the pay is surprisingly good. She’s done it since she was fourteen, only managed to buy the car, beat up and second hand as it is, around six to eight months ago.

Her dad could drive. Sansa remembers the small Volvo they used to have when she was a kid. He sold it so he could afford to get Sansa her swimming and training lessons, and so they could pay the bills. He’d never said a word of complaint about it, ever.

“Fuck,” she swears again, getting out of the car.

The air is cool and crisp, quite unlike the unusually warm January weather they’ve been having the past few days. She shivers as the breeze picks up, lifting her hand to knock on the door. Sansa tries to straighten her posture, finds herself tucking strands of hair behind her ears.

“Da,” she says, surprised to find him behind the door.

“Hello,” he replies, shooting her a smile.

She follows him inside, closing the door with a soft click. The house is warm, and Sansa can sense the feeling in her fingers begin to return.

“You didn’t tell me you were the reason they won the relay,” her dad says, turning to face her suddenly.

They’re standing in the middle of the hall now, with the kitchen to their left and another room to their right. Sansa can see from the corner of her eye that the walls are painted a vivid green, which, though unlike any walls she’s seen in either her own house or any of her friends, still looks rather pretty.

“What?”

Her father moves into the kitchen.

“Jon was telling me how you saved the race,” Ned informs her.

Sansa feels some strange weight lift off her chest.

“Oh,” is all she replies, feeling awkward under her father’s proud gaze. It is one thing to have her friends see her accomplishments and then comment on it without her having to say anything; it was quite another for Sansa to casually mention it to her father when he had no idea. It seems rather arrogant in Sansa’s eyes, to have described it like that.

Sansa wonders what kind of person would have been comfortably declaring that, without having any true proof. _I won that race even though my team was losing._ She pictures going home, stalking into her kitchen, and saying that to her dad, without shame or awkwardness. She almost frowns at the thought.

“I’m proud of you.”

Sansa grants her dad a small smile, knowing he means well.

“I’ll just be a minute, yeah?”

He starts to disappear to the back door.

“Okay,” she calls out, just as the door shuts behind him.

Sansa shifts on her feet. She hasn’t been left alone in this house before. She feels like she’s under surveillance, even though there isn’t a soul in sight. _Maybe they have cameras inside the house,_ she thinks, shuffling.

Sansa, instead of going into the kitchen, moves to the green room instead. It’s large, with wide open windows facing the other side of the yard. Sansa catches sight of a tall large statue of a woman. She steps gingerly into the room, careful not to make too much noise. There’s a large couch, all plush and cashmere, pressed against the wall. The room is sparsely decorated with a few other expensive looking items. Sansa gravitates towards the bookcase, her eyes glancing over the various covers. Before she can stop herself, one of her hands darts forward and grabs a hold of one of them; _The Fountainhead,_ by Ayn Rand.

“Hello.”

Sansa whirls around to see Jon standing at the entrance of the room.

“Hi,” she says, clutching the book to her chest.

Sansa hadn’t seen him after lunch. By the time she’d returned from the concession stand, he had left.

“What do you have there?” he asks. He steps forward before she can answer, his eyes looking for the title.

“I think you’d like it,” Sansa tells him. “It has a lot to do with individualism versus collectivism and all that.”

“Sounds like my motto.”

Sansa lets out an amused huff.

“Yeah, it has all the serious stuff.”

Their eyes meet, and the joke falls flat. She wonders a moment if he’s disappointed in her, or angry. Her lips part a little.

“I’ve already read it,” he says, before she can force the words out her mouth.

Sansa exhales loudly.

“Did you like it?”

“A little.”

His nose wrinkles.

“Rand is more than mildly problematic.”

“That’s an understatement,” Sansa replies.

The silence seems a bit heavier between them, filled with a nervous energy that makes Sansa’s throat clamp.

“There’s a book here that I think you might enjoy,” Jon says suddenly, moving so he’s standing next to her. “I can lend it to you, if you want.”

They’re almost the same height, Sansa realises. She’s not sure how she’s never noticed that before. She doesn’t think she’s ever stood this close to him.

“Yeah?” she says instead.

He crouches in front of the bookcase.

“Let me see,” he murmurs, his brow furrowing as he begins to search.

As Sansa watches him, the tension that had been making her stomach clench since lunch begins to ease.

\--

Sansa has been coming to pick her dad up early, these past two weeks. Jon has noticed it. He didn’t want to believe it at first, but the pattern is there, and their conversations have grown longer. He starts to look forward to their afternoon interactions, where they either talk quietly about books or make awkward small talk about their grades and the weather.

It’s Thursday today, and Jon says hi to Ned when he gets home before going upstairs to take a shower. He doesn’t know why he does it; usually he showers at night, since he hates going to bed with any dirt or sweat on him. Jon remembers once he’d bumped into her when he was coming down the stairs. He’d been shirtless then, as he was about to go for a swim. They’d stood there awkwardly until Jon had blurted out, “Sorry, so sorry,” and scurried away, like it wasn’t his house.

Jon thinks of that moment as he showers. She hadn’t told anyone that she’d seen him like that, in his trunks about to go for a swim. Jon didn’t even think anyone knew that her dad worked at his house. No one had mentioned it.

Jon dries himself quickly, running the towel through his wet curls. Unlike most school afternoons, he’s actually changed out of his uniform and into a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt. He kind of feels like his limbs are swimming underneath the soft fabric, but Jon is much too comfortable to care. Besides, it’s not like the uniform is particularly well fitting.

He isn’t sure if she’s arrived by the time he climbs down the stairs. He feels lighter, somehow. Almost cheerful.

Jon catches sight of a blur of red to his left.

“Hi,” he says, stepping into the sitting room.

She whirls around, her skirt fluttering as she does.

“Hi,” she responds.

“What?” Jon asks, folding his arms in front of his chest.

“Nothing,” she tells him. Jon notices the book in her hands. “I just don’t think I’ve ever seen you outside your uniform; at least not in years.”

“Difficult to believe I exist outside of school, huh?”

“I’ve always known that,” she replies swiftly. “This exists outside of school, after all.”

They stare at each other for a long moment.

“Right,” Sansa says, clearing her throat as she averts her gaze. She raises the hand that’s holding the book.

“I finished this,” she tells him, waving it around.

“Did you like it?” he asks, stepping forward.

“Yeah,” she says, her gaze plastered to the back cover. “You were right, as always.”

“I don’t think I’m always right,” he whispers, unable to help himself.

He sees her freeze, as though his words have caused her brain to malfunction.

“Do your friends know you read so much?” he asks her.

“Not really.”

She taps the book with her fingers.

“I don’t think reading is their sort of thing,” she finishes.

“You mean they’re not interested in the world around them?”

Her jaw clenches a little, like it always does whenever he mentions her friends.

“They have different interests,” she interjects softly. “They like to do different things.”

“Like brag about who they’re having sex with or judging people’s Instagram posts?”

“They do a bit of that,” Sansa allows, meeting his gaze head on. “I’m not gonna defend it, I know it can be annoying. It is for me too, sometimes.” She bites down on her lips, as if she’s unsure whether saying that was a good idea.

“I won’t tell anyone,” he blurts out, moving even closer. Jon doesn’t feel like he’s in control of his legs. He naturally moves towards her, like he has no other choice.

“What about?” she questions carefully.

“What you said,” he elaborates, stopping his steps. “I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Jon doesn’t know how to describe the look in her eyes as she gazes at him. It’s full of bewilderment and scrutiny all at once. Jon feels his chest tighten.

Sansa nods finally, as if this is something she’s always known.

“You know,” she begins, her eyes moving across the room, before settling on a spot near his shoulder. “You said you liked me, around two weeks ago. When you had detention, you said it.”

“Yeah,” he admits, the confession making his cheeks burn. “I did.”

She pauses, as if trying to choose the right words.

“Did you mean as a friend or...”

Jon’s gaze flickers across her face. She really is beautiful; he thinks to himself.

“No,” he says truthfully. “Not just as a friend.”

“Yeah, I thought that might have been what you meant, but I wasn’t sure.”

Jon says nothing; just waits. He’s scared what will happen if he interrupts her now, or maybe he’s just eager to get on with it. To be humiliated and left with her scorn.

“I… I don’t quite know what I feel,” she tells him. “I think it would be awkward and confusing if anyone at school knew we had something going on.”

Jon accepts this piece of information with a calmness he’s later proud of.

“No one would have to know,” Jon tells her.

It’s strange that he only realises now how close in height they are. He’s only an inch taller than her, and Jon’s pretty sure that inch is his untameable curls.

Instinctively, they both seem to move closer to one another. Her eyes flicker down to his lips, and Jon knows she’s going to kiss him – or should he kiss her? Jon doesn’t have the time to feel nervous, because then her lips are on his. It’s a soft kiss, their lips closed and it’s only when it lingers that he opens his mouth a little, her tongue brushing against the inside of his mouth before she pulls away.

He hears Sansa exhale and watches as she begins to rub the side of her neck.

Jon can’t help but laugh a little. It’s breathy and light, and Jon flushes at the sound of it.

“What?” Sansa asks.

Jon can’t stop his smile.

“Nothing,” he says.

“You’re acting like you’ve never been kissed before.”

“I haven’t.”

Sansa laughs then too, her face blushing intensely as she covers her face with her hands, as though she’s the one with a reason to be embarrassed. It makes Jon laugh harder, and his smile stretches his lips.

He can feel something bloom in his chest and for some reason neither of them can look the other in the eye, as though they’re little kids who have been caught in trouble.

“Sansa!” Ned calls from the kitchen.

Her face seems to lose its flush at the sound of her father’s voice, and Jon supposes he should be more alarmed, but he can’t help it.

“I. . .” Sansa scratches behind her ear. “Don’t tell anyone at school about this, yeah?”

“As if I talk to anyone in school,” he replies, biting down on his lip.

Their eyes meet for a second.

Jon feels, for some mildly unfathomable and unrealistic reason, that he knows Sansa Stark. That they have some understanding that no one else can comprehend, like one kiss has cemented them on the same path.

“Bye,” she murmurs.

She brushes past him on her way out.

“Bye,” he whispers back, to an empty room.

\--

Sansa likes to drive by herself. Sometimes, when she’s bored and has a free afternoon, she’ll drive along the countryside with her windows down, music blasting. It’ll calm her. Usually she has her best ideas for writing when she drives. Sometimes she’ll even say them out loud, to keep her mind busy.

Sansa is driving now. It’s Friday, and there’s a small get together at Margaery’s and Loras’ house later. It’s one of the few parties they’ll have before they all start studying for their finals in late May and early June. It’s February now, but Sansa can see exam season looming ahead. She always feel like the air is trapped in her lungs whenever she dwells on it too much; she tries to prevent them from happening, but sometimes she can’t help it.

Sansa blinks, tries to shield her eyes from the blinding sun, now peaking over the clouds. She manages to slide on her sunglasses with one hand, her other still on the steering wheel. She recognises where she is now. She could keep on going straight, and then loop back around to town. Or she could take the left turn, up the driveway to the house.

Sansa makes it a few hundred meters past the turn before she stops the car abruptly. She glances in the rear-view mirror to check no cars are there, and then reverses until she can make the left turn.

There’s a part of her brain telling her to turn back. There’s another part of her that’s forcing her forward. There’s no other cars in the driveway when she pulls in, much to her belief. She’s never been here on a Friday before.

_What are you doing?_ She thinks. _Go. Never come back here again, don’t step foot inside this house._

Sansa gets out the car.

It takes a startling small amount of time for the door to open, revealing Jon, who has stripped off his school sweater, leaving only his shirt. He’s not the most handsome boy in school. He has pouty lips, and is caught brooding more of than not.

Sansa is still here. She doesn’t leave.

“Your dad isn’t here,” Jon states, as if every part of her being isn’t screaming that.

“I know,” she admits. She wonders if her words sound as shaky as she feels.

Jon lets her in, and Sansa waits for him to lead her down the hall, past the kitchen and the green room. He doesn’t take her up the stairs, much to her relief. She doesn’t think she’d be able to make it up.

The room he leads her to is smaller than the green one, with two long couches facing a massive tv screen that’s put-on top of some rolling easel, so it can be slid out of the way. Sansa thinks the wall behind it is meant to be a projector screen, but she isn’t sure.

Jon stands in the middle of the room, staring at her intently.

“Are you going to kiss me again?” he asks.

If it were any other boy, Sansa would think he was making fun of her. But he isn’t any other boy she’s kissed, like Willas or Garlan or Joffrey, he’s Jon. And so Sansa moves forward carefully, as though she’s afraid of scaring him. She cups his cheeks in her hand and feels his curls brush against her wrists. They feel surprisingly soft.

Sansa kisses him. Besides yesterday, it’s the first time she’s ever kissed a boy first before. This kiss is harder than the one yesterday and lasts longer. Her hands move from his cheeks to his neck to his hair, she doesn’t know where to put them. His hands move to the back of her neck, but they don’t clutch or grab. They keep her steady instead.

He moves back towards the couch, and Sansa can’t help but follow.

“Do you want to take our clothes off?” he asks, once they’ve paused to take a breath.

The impulsiveness of her actions hits Sansa all at once.

“No,” she breathes, shaking her head as she covers her eyes. She feels his gaze on her. “Not here, not now.”

“Okay,” is all he says.

Sansa uncovers her eyes.

“I have to be home soon,” she tells him. “My dad has to go to the shops, and I said I’d take him.”

He doesn’t ask her why she came here then, and Sansa is glad of it. She isn’t quite sure what she’d say. She can’t even quite believe her actions herself, like this whole afternoon has just been a dream.

Their stares hold, and Sansa leans in to kiss him. They’re long, lingering kisses, and Sansa thinks to herself that if they’ve improved so much despite his lack of his experience, she doesn’t know how good it’ll be with a little more.

“I have a free house on Saturday,” she says, once they pull apart.

_Tomorrow,_ a part of her whispers. _That’s tomorrow._

“You can come over, if you want.”

She can’t take it back now, can’t just run up and leave. Sansa isn’t even quite sure that she wants to.

“You won’t be hungover?” he asks. “I heard Margaery is having a party tonight.”

Sansa laughs a little, though it isn’t really funny.

“I’ll be fine,” she tells him. “So, will you come? On Saturday?”

“Yeah,” he says, eyeing her carefully. “I’ll come.”

Sansa rises to her feet, smoothing out her skirt.

“Alright then.”

She finds him already looking at her.

“I’ll see you.”

“Bye, then.”

She leaves, but she’s not sure if she feels more clarity than before she arrived.

\--

Jon lays in bed, staring at the ceiling.

He can hear the sound of his father and Rhaenys walking about in the floor below, but it sounds distant and far away. The rest of the world feels that way too. He closes his eyes and tries to sleep, but his insides feel strangely fluttery, like he needs to stay awake.

Jon thinks of her then. He remembers the way she’d laughed when he’d said he hadn’t been kissed before. It hadn’t been mocking or mean – Jon didn’t feel like he was being laughed at, which was a change. Instead, it feels more to him like they had bonded over this strange, mildly ridiculous situation they had managed to find themselves in.

This afternoon still doesn’t feel quite real. Jon feels like he’s being walking around, dazed, as if he’s in a coma. The weight of their secret sits comfortably on his chest, makes him smile to himself.

He wonders what will happen tomorrow. He wonders if he’ll be any good at it.

Jon isn’t used to not knowing where his strengths are; he’s a good student, a good presenter during class. He can research things well and read quickly. He’s a passable enough cook. He can’t interact well with others or throw a ball particularly well.

To him, this is like standing behind a door and not knowing what lays behind it or how it will shape his life. Because it will change him, Jon knows that. He can already feel the axis of his world begin to tilt, ever so slightly, like having this experience has altered his universe, changed it so it can never be the same as it once was.

Jon frowns to himself a little. He isn’t one who believes that sex is some life changing thing – he hasn’t even had it yet. He didn’t think that having sex made someone damaged or less pure. To him, that line of thinking always seemed mildly sexist; he couldn’t honestly state whether intercourse was truly enjoyable, but he didn’t think sex made someone whole.

Or maybe it did.

Maybe that’s why his schoolmates seem much more relaxed than he is, so much more liked. Jon doesn’t particularly want their approval, or feel the need to act like Joffrey or Loras, but he is curious if this is the reason, he seems so different to everyone else. If the simple act of being with someone intimately will change who he is as a person, and he won’t recognise who he was before that.

Jon feels his phone buzz on his nightstand. He doesn’t get midnight messages – he barely gets any messages at all.

There’s no greeting or apology for texting at such a late hour, only an address.

Jon smiles. The light from his phone makes his eyes squint.

\--

Sansa stares at the mirror, exhaling loudly. She’s holding her eyeliner in one hand, the other tapping the dresser absentmindedly. Her eyes flicker to the clock near her bed. _12:02._ She reaches for a tissue and swipes at her eyes, rubbing the uneven lines off. She puts the rest of her makeup in her drawer, except her cherry lip balm, which she applies with careful precision.

Wearing too much makeup felt awkward, like this was a date. Sansa has worn lots of makeup on the dates she’d been on before. She’d curled her hair meticulously or straightened it until it was like a pin. She’d tried on different outfits the night before while skyping with Margaery or Jeyne or, less commonly, Myrcella.

That is not an option now, though strangely she feels more nervous for this than she has for any of the other dates she’s ever been on. _Is this even a date?_ she asks herself. Sansa isn’t sure, and that lack of clarification both calms her and sets her nerves on edge.

She paces back and forth in her room, the floorboards creaking with every turn. She’s glad her dad isn’t here; he’d notice her anxiousness straight away.

She stops suddenly when she hears her phone buzz. She moves to her desk and picks it up. It’s from Jon.

_On my way,_ it reads.

Sansa feels something inside of her surge up dangerously, and while it isn’t bile, it’s not exactly relief either. She feels as though she’s balancing on a tightrope and is unable to regain her balance. She sinks down onto her chair.

_Kk,_ she replies, her hands trembling. _See u soon._

She gulps loudly, catching her gaze in the mirror. She’s tied her hair up. Should it be up? Would it get in the way if she put it down? In the way of what, she isn’t sure. Her heartbeat flutters dangerously whenever she tries to follow or complete that line of thought.

Sansa rises from her chair and moves for her bedroom door. She hadn’t had to do much cleaning up, only shove some shirts into the hamper shoved in her closet.

_Tea,_ she thinks. _I need tea._

She boils water in the kettle and fishes out a teabag from the cupboard. The warm liquid burns her throat, but Sansa doesn’t feel the pain, only notices the way her throat constricts. She feels like all sensation has been stripped from her, with the only thing left being this pit in her stomach.

Tea spills from the rim when Sansa quickly puts the mug down at the sound of the doorbell.

_Jesus,_ she thinks, moving out the kitchen so she can reach the door as fast as possible. She doesn’t want to leave Jon out there, waiting. Anyone could see him that way. As she wraps her hand around the doorknob, Sansa imagines Margaery or Jeyne walking past her house and seeing Jon waiting outside her door. They’d probably come knocking straight away, or chase him away from her.

Sansa shakes her head as the door opens.

“Hi,” he says.

Sansa looks at him. He’s wearing a pair of dark blue jeans and a white shirt.

“Hi,” she responds, moving aside to let him in.

Her eyes can’t help but dart behind him, as if to check that no one has seen him come in. Sansa shuts the door. They stand there awkwardly a moment, casting small, interceptive looks at each other with their eyes cast low. Sansa is wearing black leggings and a grey sweater that exposes her collarbones. Her legs are perfectly shaved. Sansa even wore her nice perfume.

“Are you alright?’ she asks.

He blinks, as if snapping out of a daydream.

“Yeah,” he replies. “I just bumped into my sister on my way out.”

“Oh,” she comments.

“Don’t worry,” he says lightly, as if trying to soothe her. “I didn’t tell her where I was going.”

Sansa lets out a small amused huff.

“Do you want something to drink?”

“Yeah. Tea would be great.”

When Sansa comes back from the kitchen, she finds him still standing in the hallway, his eyes examining the walls. Her dad likes to hang pictures of their family everywhere – most are of him and Sansa, but there are pictures of her cousins, few though they are, and her Uncle Benjen and her grandparents. There are no pictures of her mother. Sansa isn’t quite sure who she is. No one in the town knows. Her father had gotten some lady pregnant, and she’d had the baby, popped into town, and left him with it before disappearing off the face of the earth. Sansa doesn’t particularly care to know who she is, though she knows some of her friends enjoy the idea of solving this town mystery, as if it isn’t Sansa’s life they would be inspecting, her father.

“Your house is very nice,” Jon tells her, when she hands him his mug.

Sansa doesn’t know him well enough to tell if he’s just being polite; she doesn’t try. After a few moments of stilted conversation, she leads him up the stairs to her room. She feels a bit hesitant before she leads him through the door, as if this is some private part of herself, she’ll be exposing and not just a room she simply happens to inhabit.

Sansa sits in the chair, moving it so she faces the bed, where Jon plants himself. He sits there delicately, as if he’s worried about wrinkling the sheets.

“You have a lot of posters,” he says, looking around the room.

She does; there’s some newspaper clippings that talk of her swim accomplishments, that her dad had given her. There’s some of writers and other famous athletes above her desk. She’s even stuck a few pictures there too, of her and friends. She has a framed photo and her and her dad on her desk. It felt weird having a picture of him hanging above her head.

The idea now seems strangely comical, and she has to bite down on her lip to keep from laughing.

“What?” Jon asks.

He smiles a little, exposing his straight front teeth.

“Nothing,” she replies. “I just can’t imagine you having posters in your room.”

Jon chuckles. “That’s fair. Only cool people having posters in their rooms.”

“And you don’t think you’re cool?”

He sends her a look, as if to ask if she’s really being serious.

“No,” he states simply, so pointedly Sansa feels her lips twitch. “I hardly doubt cool would a word people would associate with me, or even put in the same sentence.”

“What would you describe yourself as then?” she questions. To her, Jon seems a bit attached from everything at school, separate from all the gossip and the teasing and the bad jokes. He seems ready for adulthood in a way that Sansa hasn’t ever felt or seen in anyone.

“Hmm,” he murmurs. He takes a sip from his tea, contemplating her question seriously. He looks like that often when he talks to her. “Obnoxious,” he says, laughing a little. “Serious. Brooding, definitely.”

Sansa chuckles a bit too.

“Oh, self-righteous,” he adds. “Condescending, judgemental, arrogant, maybe.”

He says this with such little care of other’s opinions that Sansa can’t help but feel a bit uncomfortable.

“Stop it,” she says. “No one says that about you.”

She’s being dishonest and they both know it.

“It’s okay,” he says, shrugging.

“I’m sure people say the same about it me when I’m not listening,” she murmurs, folding her arms in front of her chest.

“That’s not true,” he tells her. “No one finds you annoying.”

“What makes you say that?” she can’t help but ask.

“Well, everyone likes you, for starters, and no one ever finds shy people bothersome.”

“You think I’m shy?” she asks, in a more defensive tone than she’d like. No one has ever called her shy before; quiet, maybe, but never shy.

“Yes,” he responds, staring at her owlishly. “You’re quite quiet, you know.”

“Just because I don’t share my opinion or protest at everything –“

“You don’t say your opinion about anything,” he interrupts, not unkindly. “I’m not saying being shy is a bad thing. I could probably benefit from not saying what I think all the time.”

Sansa remains quiet, stewing in the emotions he’s brought out in her.

“Sorry,” he says, placing his mug by the foot of her bed. “I didn’t mean to offend you, if I have.”

“You just always know what you think,” she murmurs, lifting her gaze from the carpet. His expression is open and free. Sansa feels like if she peered into his eyes, she would see every thought he’s ever had, witness everything he’s feeling.

“And how to express it, and when to say it,” she continues. “I’m not like that.” Her mouth twists as she struggles to formulate her thoughts. “Words don’t come easy to me.”

She waits for some bland and stereotypical reassurance.

“You must know what you feel though,” he says, straightening his posture.

“Not always,” she admits, looking him in the eye. “Sometimes I’ll look back and think that’s how I felt or realize something, but when I’m feeling it, when I’m in it. . . I don’t know.”

“What about now?” he asks her. He looks a little frightened, as though she has the power to lift or crush him with a single sentence. Which, Sansa realizes, she supposes she does. The knowledge makes her stand, but it doesn’t make her feel powerful.

She’s standing in between his legs before she can blink or ask herself if this is really a good idea, if this is really what she wants. She cups his face in her hands. He seems rather handsome to her now in a way he’s never really been for her before. The golden light that peaks out from her shutters makes his skin seem tan.

“Are you going to kiss me again?” he whispers, just as she starts to bend down.

She’s smiling as their lips touch. His lips are plumper than any other guy she’s made out with, but she finds it isn’t a bad thing. Sansa uses her lips as a guide, an instruction manual. She pulls her head back a little when his lips start to swallow her own or pulls back her tongue when it meets his awkwardly.

But he gets the hang of it rather quickly and Sansa hums when he bites down gently on her lower lip.

“Is that okay?” he asks her softly.

Sansa feels something warm pool in her stomach.

“Yeah,” she says, her voice heavy. “Yeah that’s okay.”

She presses a kiss to his forehead, just because she can. His arms make their way her waist, his hands eventually resting on her hips.

“Do you want to take our clothes off now?” he whispers into her sweater.

Sansa lets out a loud breath.

“Yeah,” she says, smiling a little. “Yeah we can take off our clothes now.”

When he stands, he brings their bodies flush together, his hands tightening their grip. They kiss, once, twice, before she pulls away, tugging at his shirt. He lifts his arms over his head, and Sansa is careful to duck away from his elbows.

“Sorry,” he tells her, having caught sense of her movement. His shirt gets stuck going over his head, and Sansa winces a little as she tries to pull it off.

“I’m sorry,” she says, laughing a little as she tries again.

He laughs too, a soft, warm sound that echoes throughout her room.

“I didn’t think this shirt through,” he mumbles, just as she manages to yank it over his head. She drops it to the floor.

They manage to get off her sweater with ease and Sansa smooths out her ponytail once it’s over her head. It ends up with Jon’s sweater.

Sansa reaches for the clasp of her bra, her gaze lowering to the ground. With the other boys, they’d taken it off, smirking proudly like it was some kind of achievement, like they’d won something by seeing her shirtless.

Sansa lets her bra fall to the floor, her eyes resting on Jon’s bare chest. She’d seen him shirtless once before, a little while ago. He’d come down the stairs once, wearing a pair of swim trunks, and Sansa had just happened to be there. She’d averted her eyes after they’d stared at each other for one long, uncomfortable moment. He’d hurried away soon after that. Sansa hadn’t told anybody about it; it wasn’t anyone’s business anyhow. She hadn’t even noticed what he’d looked like; Joffrey once said he caught Jon shirtless in the bathroom. Sansa had heard him snicker as he called him scrawny and compared his arms to a chicken.

She isn’t sure why she recalls the incident now. She blinks it away, lifting her eyes to look at Jon’s face instead.

He kisses her this time, his hands rising to the back of her neck, stroking her hair absentmindedly. He pulls back, leans his forehead against hers.

“Do you do this a lot?” he asks.

Sansa feels herself stiffen. He tilts his head back, his eyes wide as they gaze into her own.

“Do what?” she retorts.

His face folds.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says. “It isn’t any of my business who you sleep with, or how many people you’ve had sex with. It’s not.”

Sansa recalls Margaery calling Jon a stuck up prick because she’d thought she’d seen him rolling his eyes and scowling when he’d overheard her telling Sansa about the two boys she’d made out with at a college party she’d been to over Winter break. _Probably thinks lesser of me because I’m no longer pure,_ Margaery had leered. Sansa hadn’t known whether or not Jon had actually thought that.

“You judged Margaery once,” she hears herself say. “Because she made out with two guys at a party.”

He tilts his head a little, his brow furrowing.

“I’ve never done that,” he responds. “I don’t care how many people anyone sleeps with, as long as it’s their choice and they’re not hurting anybody. But I don’t think it’s right for people to judge someone because they haven’t slept with or made out with a lot of people, either.”

“Oh,” she murmurs. “That makes sense.”

She presses a quick kiss to his nose, to let him know she isn’t mad. They stand there, holding each other a moment.

“If anything,” she says, after a while. “If anything, couldn’t I ask if you do this a lot?”

Jon blinks at her, confused.

“If you go about seducing girls who come to your house after school?”

He smiles a little.

“No,” he replies, pressing a kiss to her bare shoulder. “Just the one.”

“I could say you were the one seducing me.”

“I was trying to,” he admits against her neck.

“And you didn’t even have to say I was pretty,” she teases.

They both giggle as if it’s the funniest thing in the world. Once they’ve calmed, Sansa makes for the button her skirt.

“Is this okay?” she asks.

Jon nods, looking a little mesmerised as he reaches for the button of his own jeans.

They strip down until they’re standing in front of each other, naked.

Sansa reaches forward with her hands, places them on his shoulder. She watches his eyes close, as if he’s frozen, as if her very touch is too much for him to bear. She lets them wander slowly, carefully, gently. His chest is smooth and hairless. Sansa feels like she could keep touching him forever, she’s drunk with the sensation.

Her hands begin to lower to his stomach, down to his hips. She brings one of her hands to her mouth, wets it a little.

“Can I?”

He opens his eyes, realizes the direction of her hand.

“Yeah,” he says, nodding.

Sansa touches him at the tip, her touch soft. He’s half hard already. She begins to move her hand up and down, reveling in his soft whimpers, in the broken groans that escape his throat. It’s so easy, touching him. She doesn’t feel nervous anymore.

She presses a kiss to his shoulder, then his neck, her hand moving up and down.

“You okay?” she breathes.

He kisses her in response, their tongues moving together languidly. Sansa feels his hands hover over her thighs. They move around her stomach, her waist, dip down to the curls between thighs. Sansa shivers.

“Is this –“

“Yes,” she breathes, biting down a whimper.

He moves backwards to the bed, laying down, with Sansa following on top of him, her legs bracketing his hips.

She moves back a little, panting.

“Do you want to have sex?” she asks.

She doesn’t feel shy saying it.

He nods a little, looking a bit nervous.

“Is this your first time?”

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Is that okay?”

Sansa moves off the bed to grab a condom from the bottom drawer of her nightstand.

“Yeah of course.”

She brings the packet with her but doesn’t open it just yet. She climbs back on top of him, pulling her hair out of its ponytail.

“What?” she asks, when she catches him looking as she shakes it out.

“I don’t want it to hurt,” he murmurs, his hands resting on his stomach.

“I don’t think this will hurt you.”

“No,” he protests shyly, biting down on his swollen lower lip. “I meant you.”

Sansa stares at him.

“It hurts if you’re not ready,” he tells her. “If you haven’t come before I...” His cheeks redden. “I read it somewhere.”

Sansa laughs a little.

“You read that?” she asks gently, another laugh escaping her lips.

“What?”

He doesn’t sound that put off, merely curious.

“I’m just imagining you researching this stuff,” she teases.

Sansa hadn’t thought it possible, but his cheeks flush even more. It takes her a moment to notice his ears doing the same.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, casting his gaze to her bed sheets.

The sight of it makes her lean forward and tilt his chin up gently with her finger.

“Hey,” she breathes. She kisses him, and she feels light. The tenderness in her chest softens the need to come as soon as possible. She pulls back, finds his eyes already wide open and staring. She’s momentarily perturbed by the sight of it.

“I think we’ll be okay,” she whispers. “I’ll teach you. Is that alright?”

His eyes fall to her lips, before he glances down to her exposed chest. His hands move down to her waist, to steady her.

“Yeah,” he breathes.

She basks in the silence for a moment.

“Sansa?”

“Yeah?”

“I think you’re very pretty by the way.”

She looks at him and can see that he means it.

She struggles with what to say in reply; words don’t come easy to her, even with him, even when everything else seems to.

She kisses him instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Gosh I'm really bad at writing sex scenes, if this even counts as one. I'm hoping to get moderately better at it, though I don't think anything will be too smutty. I'll warn you guys appropriately, LOL! 
> 
> Until next time,   
> Fionakevin073


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! So sorry this took so long to get to you guys. I hope you enjoy it! Thank you so much for all of your comments and kudos, it means a lot. Please let me know what you think! And most importantly, stay safe everyone! 
> 
> Also, TRIGGER WARNING for depiction of panic attacks and sexual harassment (minor). 
> 
> Until next time,   
> Fionakevin073

Chapter 3

Sansa has begun to understand why people make such a big deal about sex. She remembers her first time; it was with Theon when they were sixteen. They’d been childhood friends for a while and then it just happened one day in his basement. It had been awkward and weird, and she’d bled. The whole school had found out by the next day because Theon’s friends couldn’t keep their mouths shut. They didn’t date. 

It had been slightly better with Willas, who had at least tried to make her cum. His kisses had been a little too wet and overwhelming and his fingers had been clumsy. But at least he was quiet about it. Sansa didn’t have to hear about the technique of her kissing from other people or how hot she apparently sounded when she moaned. Garlan had been a bit of a bragger – a hotshot who thought he knew what he was doing, but really, really, didn’t. He hadn’t noticed that she didn’t even try to fake it. 

Sansa has spent her whole life, listening to boys like Joffrey brag about the girls they slept with at lunch. She’s heard them call girls desperate or frigid, or easy. She knows most of it is bullshit, but she’s always worried that that’s why it’s never been too great for her, that she’s always been worried about how she would appear to them and how uncomfortable hearing about her performance from others made her feel. 

Margaery used to whisper about Robb to her – ‘magical’, she liked to say frequently. And then: hot as fuck. Robb never bragged about her or broke her trust. He wasn’t like a lot of the boys at their school, who used to show off their girlfriend’s nudes to their friends. Sansa hadn’t thought it was possible to keep things like that private. 

After Jon had spent the night at her place the first time and then they’d gone back to school on Monday, Sansa had spent the entire day paranoid that someone would bring it up at lunch with a smirk, that somehow someone would know. The only flack she got was that she didn’t invite anyone over when Jeyne discovered she’d had the house to herself over the weekend. 

She’d spent the rest of the day trying not to look at him. It was just an itch, she’d repeat to herself. You’ve scratched it, move on. This was some weird experiment. It won’t happen again. 

But even then, she knew she was lying. That day, after school, she spent some time in town hanging out with Margaery and as she was driving home, she somehow took a few turns and ended up outside his door. As Jon kissed his way down to the place between her thighs, Sansa had thought that coming over was the best idea she’d ever had, the only one that really made sense. 

It’s Friday, now, and Sansa is in Jon’s room again. Sweat makes their bodies stick together. Jon’s head is on her shoulder. Sansa knows her face is red, her forehead damp, but she doesn’t feel the need to wipe at her face. Already, this room feels like it has some protective bubble and Sansa knows that whatever happens in here, with him – anywhere, really – will stay between them. It’s like this exists only for them and the outside realm can’t touch it or interfere with it. Sansa’s hand plays with one of his curls. He sighs, and it sounds like a purr. 

“You sound like a cat,” she tells him, smiling. 

Jon glances up at her and he smiles once he sees she already is. He does that sometimes; look at her as though he expects her to be angry, as though she’s on the verge of kicking him out or yelling at him. Only a smile or a laugh or a touch will soothe the stricken look on his face. 

“I need to find a hair tie,” she murmurs. Her hair is currently stuck to her back due to sweat, making her nose wrinkle. 

“Look in the upper drawer of the nightstand,” Jon tells her sleepily, moving a little so she can sit up, though their legs remain entangled. “I think you left one here on Monday.” 

Sansa opens the drawer, pushes aside the box of condoms he’d bought recently, a few other papers. She pauses at the sight of the photograph. She’d seen it on Monday, when she’d fumbled through his drawer for a condom and accidentally grabbed it. 

Jon had paused when he noticed her holding it. He’d plucked it from her grasp and put it back in the drawer before taking a condom from the pack. 

“The frame broke,” he told her, after they’d finished, and she’d asked. “I never got around to putting it back or buying another one.” 

Sansa knows, even though he never said, that it’s of his mother. The resemblance was too strong. Sansa knows Jon doesn’t look like the rest of his family, knows why his last name is different from everyone else’s. It’s one of the biggest town scandals, besides her mother’s mysterious identity. He never talks about it. 

Sansa pushes aside the small picture and finds a white scrunchie. 

“I was looking for this,” she says, tying her hair back into a low ponytail. She lies back down and Jon instantly puts his head back on her chest, eyes closed. Her hands go back to his curls and he makes a small, pleased sound at the back of his throat. 

Sansa tries not to smile. It’s nice to feel needed, to not feel like some object to be used. 

“This is nice,” Jon murmurs. 

Sansa closes her eyes, inhales. She thinks of what her friends would think if they knew she was here, if they knew what they were doing, that she liked it, more than she had anything else. 

“Yeah,” she says finally, so quietly she’s not sure the words actually left her lips. “It is.” 

\--

Jon’s never been in a secret relationship before. In fact, Jon has never been in any relationship before. He doesn’t even have any friends.

Jon isn’t even sure if he should count this as a relationship. It certainly feels like one. He sees Sansa almost every day after school, and on the weekends. He’s at her house now, Ned gone for the weekend. 

She’s in his lap, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her waist. 

“Sansa,” he murmurs, panting a little. 

“Yeah?” she asks, pulling back a little. 

He brushes a curl plastered to her cheek behind her ear. You’re beautiful, he wants to say. He doesn’t. 

“Do you have a crush on anyone in school?” Light and breezy. He can do that. He’s seen that in movies and tv shows and books. This should work. 

Sansa, to his surprise, laughs. 

“What?” she breathes, shaking her head. “Jon, you’re literally still inside me.” 

He chuckles too, his insides at ease by her response. 

“I don’t know,” he said, looking down. “There’s a lot of boys at school who like you.” 

She shrugs. “I don’t know about that.” 

They order a pizza in, later on. He watches from the bed as Sansa orders a large pizza, half with jalapenos and mushroom and the other with black olives and pepperoni. He’s pleased that she still remembers his order from a few weeks ago. 

She balances her laptop on her lap, frowning a little. 

“You okay?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Just stressed about Baelish’s essay.” 

Jon opens his mouth, then closes it. You’ll be fine, he should say, but the words feel cheap, even though he knows they’re true.   
“When I’m stressed, I lie down, close my eyes, and count to ten,” he blurts out instead. 

She looks at him. 

Idiot, he thinks, wincing. 

“Yeah?” she asks, setting her laptop aside. 

He watches her, heart pounding. 

She lies down on the floor, extending out her arms and legs like a starfish. 

“Well?” she says, shaking her hands. “You coming?” 

Jon smiles a little, slides down to the ground beside her. He can smell her perfume from here. 

“Just to ten, yeah?” 

“Yeah,” he replies, closing his eyes. 

Their breathing syncs up. Jon feels his muscles relax and by the time he opens his eyes, he doesn’t know if it’s been ten minutes or several hours. He tilts his head towards Sansa, finds her already looking at him. 

“Hi,” she whispers, leaning in. 

The kiss is soft and lingering and Sansa leans in to deepen it. 

“Wait,” he whispers against her lips. “The pizza—” 

“We have an hour,” she replies, pressing a kiss against his jaw. 

Jon is behind her, pushing in and groaning, holding tightly onto her hips. 

“Fuck,” the both moan at the same time. 

“This feels so good,” he says. “Is this good for you?”

Sansa stays quiet. 

He pauses, panicking. “Sansa, am I doing something—” 

“No,” she says. “It’s good.” 

After, when they’re both getting dressed before the pizza comes, Jon leans against the bed as she heads downstairs. Sometimes he thinks she likes to pretend who she’s doing all this stuff with, that she really believes something is wrong with her for wanting to have sex with him. 

Sansa brings up the pizza and pop after a few minutes, along with two plates and some napkins. 

“Wanna coke?” she says. 

Jon nods and soon they’re both eating, curled up in bed together. 

“What do you want to watch?” Sansa asks, pulling up Netflix. 

Jon glances at her. 

“You choose,” he says. 

“I chose last time. Your turn.” 

It’s been a month since they started this. It took three weeks for them to do something other than have sex and talk. 

“Okay,” he says, heart beating just a little faster. 

He flips through the options a few times, feeling oddly flustered. Last time she had finished the season for some tv show she was watching, Jane the Virgin. Jon had actually enjoyed it, for one. But—

Sansa chuckles. 

“Of course,” she says, smiling as she shakes her head. 

“What?” he says, a touch defensive. “We can watch something else—” 

“No,” she cuts in. “It’s just, of course you’d like to watch some German foreign film – and actually enjoy it.” 

“Foreign language films expose us to entire different types of filmmaking, acting and cultures. It’s very important. Besides, most people who complain about watching a foreign film are middle-aged straight white people who are too lazy to read subtitles.” 

A pause. 

“Sorry,” he says, face a little red. 

Sansa shakes her head. 

“No,” she tells him. “Don’t be. You’re right, anyway.”

After the movie finishes, she disappears to the bathroom. Jon does the dishes, putting the plates in the small little dishwasher by the oven. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” she says, appearing in the doorway. 

She rubs at her eyes, her crew sweatshirt rising up a little. She’s wearing a pair of boxers she borrowed once when she visited and then took home to wash. It makes something warm in his chest to see it. 

She walks up to him and hugs him close. 

“It’s okay,” he whispers into her hair. “I want to. I’m here a lot of the time anyway.” 

“Yeah,” she says, almost surprised. “You are.” 

She winces a little. 

“You okay?” 

“Yeah. Just got my period, is all.” 

She pauses, stiffens, just a little, as though that’s something he’s going to be mad at.

“Do you want something?” he asks. “You can go lie down, I’ll bring it up.” 

She pulls back, looks at him searchingly. 

“Tea would be great,” she says. Then adds: “And chocolate.” 

Jon laughs. 

“Sure,” he replies. “Coming right up.” 

\--

Sansa, Margaery, Jeyne, Theon and Loras pile into her car, chattering amongst themselves. She pulls out of the school driveway, laughs when Theon yells out to Joffrey through the window. The sun is blaring down on them, a hot March day, and she squints a little as she drives. 

Jeyne turns to her, smiling as she parks outside the shop.   
“You want spring rolls, right Sansa?” 

“Yes. Be quick, yeah, in and out?” 

Margaery laughs as Loras opens the car. 

“Don’t worry my darling,” she says, teasing. “We’ll be back in a flash.” 

Sansa shakes her head at them, rolling her eyes, though in good humour. 

Only Theon is left in the car. 

“Sansa, you never said your dad worked for the Targaryen’s,” Theon’s voice drawls. 

Sansa freezes a little, clutching the steering wheel. 

“Where’d you hear that?” she asks. 

She wonders if they noticed how little she’s been going out with them, how when she’s there she’s not always fully there. She wonders if he saw, or one of them saw her and Jon together. Her heart rises in her throat. 

“Rhaenys mentioned it to my sister,” he supplies. 

Sansa relaxes. She’s barely seen Jon’s older sister, and he doesn’t talk about her often. 

“Oh,” she says. “Yeah, he’s been working there for a year.” 

“Do you go in the house often?”

“Once or twice.” 

“Hmm,” he says, as though this is the most interesting thing in the world. “Do you get to see Jon in his natural habitat?” 

Theon isn’t like Joffrey, who constantly has it out for others who are not his friends. But when he gets going, his words can be sharp and biting. They used to be a lot closer, before eleventh grade. Theon was her first, long before Jeyne had fully realized she liked him, anyway. 

“Not really,” she says.

“He’d probably look at you with disdain, treat you like some kind of servant.” 

He’d fallen asleep on her bed, yesterday, almost as soon as they’d arrived. He’d borrowed one of her hoodies because he was cold. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Maybe.” 

She relaxes a little when the rest of their friends pile back into the car. 

“Your spring rolls,” Jeyne says, waving the box at her. 

Sansa laughs, startled. 

“Right,” she says, her stomach clenching. “Thanks.” 

\--

Jon spends most of Sunday holed up in his room. His eyes start to burn from staring at his laptop for so long. He spends hours re-reading his application, making sure he has everything right. Of course, final decisions will depend on his exam results. 

He rubs at his eyes, fingers sore. 

Jon makes his way down eventually, an empty mug in his hands. 

Rhaegar is there, chopping up some salad. Rhaenys is sitting by the dinner table, glass of wine in hand. 

“Hello,” Rhaegar says, smiling a little. “Application going alright?” 

“Yeah,” Jon says, setting his mug down and putting the kettle on. “Almost finished.” 

Rhaegar nods, runs a hand through his almost-silver like blonde hair. 

“Highgarden is a competitive school,” he comments, as if Jon doesn’t already know that. 

“You went there,” Jon points out. “And grandad.” 

Rhaegar chuckles a little. 

“Yeah,” he replies. “I suppose I did. Feels like a lifetime ago.” 

Jon leans back against the counter, watches the water in the kettle start to boil. 

Rhaegar moves to stand beside him. 

“You know, I was going to go look at some paint for the flat in King’s Landing,” he says. 

Jon looks at his father, a lump forming in his throat. 

“You could come with me, pick something out, the paint is pretty chipped,” Rhaegar continues. “Since you are going to live there, it makes sense.” 

“Yeah,” Jon says, throat raw. “I’d like that.” 

Rhaegar smiles at him. 

Jon jumps when Rhaenys stands up abruptly, the chair scratching against the floor loudly. She glares at him as she walks past. 

“Why should he live in the flat?” she asks. “He’s not even a proper Targaryen.” 

“Rhaenys,” Rhaegar sighs, then falls silent. 

“Whatever,” she says, shaking her head, almost as if disgusted. 

Jon leaves the kitchen, mug abandoned. On days like these, he lies on the ground and stares up at his ceiling. Snow, he thinks. His mother’s last name, the only thing he had of her, besides her looks. 

He wonders briefly, if the roles were reversed, if he would hate Rhaenys as much as she hates him. 

\--

“Fuck,” Sansa murmurs under her breath. 

“Application troubles?” Jon asks from where he’s sitting on her bed. He’s wearing one of her hoodies and his pair of boxers. There’s a book on his lap, some French one about paintings that he likes to read. 

“Yeah,” she says, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “I just don’t know why I put down Law at Northern.” 

She pauses, and he waits for her to find the words. 

“It seemed like a good idea at the time but now I’m just like what was I thinking? I can’t imagine myself going to court every day and fighting to lock away criminals or defend them. I can’t.” 

Jon’s gaze is soft when she meets it. She smiles a little at the sight of him. 

“It’s easy for you,” she says. “You’ve always known what you wanted and where you want to study.” 

“That’s true,” he replies, a small smile lighting up his face. “Highgarden is where I’m going.” 

“Sure you’re going to get in, are you?” 

“Yes,” he admits, without any hint of shame or self-doubt. 

Sansa wonders at that; she can’t picture being like Jon, so sure in her own abilities, in the belief that everything would go as planned. It must be quite a thing. 

“I think you should put down English,” Jon tells her shyly. 

Sansa snaps out her reverie. 

“Really? You’re not just saying that?” 

“I really think you should,” he continues, staring at her intently. “It’s the only class in school you really enjoy, and you spend all of your spare time reading.” 

“Yeah but Northern’s English program is shat,” Sansa says, glancing down at her laptop screen and frowning. 

“You could apply to English at Highgarden,” he murmurs. 

Sansa lifts her gaze to meet his, momentarily too taken aback to say anything. Highgarden. Highgarden. The more she thinks of it, the more the notion seems more and more plausible. Now, in this moment, the idea of going to Highgarden seems to be something within her reach. She could go, with Jon. Jon. Jesus. 

“Would you pretend not to know me?” Sansa asks, her heart shuddering at the thought. “If we bumped into each other in college?” 

Jon’s eyes peer into her own, and it both calms her, and makes her want to wince. When he looks at her like this, she can’t pretend. The line between who she is with her friends and who she is with him begins to blur until she doesn’t know what is real anymore, what is true. What she wants. 

“Sansa,” Jon says, her name sounding holy on his lips, though his eyes look a little sad. “I’d never pretend not to know you.” 

“Hmm,” Sansa says, realising how this sounded. She hates how this conversation has slipped out of her grasp, and she’s eager to get rid of that look on his face. 

“Okay,” she tells him. “I’ll put down English at King’s Landing.” 

He beams at her, and Sansa feels a rush with it; a rush at the knowledge that she can make him happy. She looks down at her screen. Something has inexplicably shifted in their dynamic and the longer she stares at her application, the more weight this revelation has. Jon has power over her too, a hold that she hadn’t even fully realised until now. 

Overwhelmed, Sansa clears her throat. 

“You alright?” Jon asks. 

“Yeah,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “Just fine.” 

-

Jon’s sitting out back, by the pool when she arrives. He texts her to let her know he’s there. It’s too cold to swim, only April, but he likes to sit by the water anyway, with a book in hand. He’s alerted to her presence when she sits in the lounger beside him. 

“Hi,” she says. 

At lunch today, Joffrey had called him a freak of nature, with greasy, disgusting hair and a constipated face. Sansa had left for the library before he’d started, but he somehow knows from her expression that she had heard about it from someone. 

It comforts him, just a little, how easy he can read her, how well he knows her by now. 

“Hi,” he replies, something squeezing a little in his chest. She turns her gaze to survey the grounds her father takes care of. 

“It’s pretty,” she says. 

“Yeah, that’s mostly due to Ned.” It’s true. 

She doesn’t say anything at the mention of her father. They start making a bit of small talk, Sansa complaining about one of the kids she teaches swimming. 

“He just spends his time getting drunk by the Ghost with booze he sneaks from his parents and older brother,” she says, shaking her head. 

Jon frowns. 

“Where?” 

“The Ghost,” she elaborates, as if he’s supposed to know where that is. 

“I have no idea what that is.” 

“It’s a row of empty townhouses behind the school,” she tells him. “I thought everyone knew about it.” 

“Not quite,” he says. It sounds a little hollow and shy. 

Sansa stares at him. He can see the indecision in her eyes. There’s a reason why they only hang out at each other’s houses, indoors. She never actively mentions why she wants everything to remain secret, but she doesn’t have to. Jon knows. He understands it. Oh, I wish we could, he imagines her saying. But we can’t. I wish things were different. 

Jon knows Sansa could change things, if she wanted. 

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go.” 

It’s only a few minutes longer than the drive to school. They don’t speak, and she doesn’t turn on the radio. They’re both in their school uniform. When they arrive, she parks the car and gets out first to check that no one’s there. She beckons him over when she deems the coast is clear.

They walk together to the row of abandoned houses. They’re all painted white, now covered in graffiti and dirt. A scrubby looking couch is parked outside the nearest house. The ground is littered with cigarette buts and empty beer cans. 

Jon observes. Sansa leads him into one of the empty houses. There’s a dirty mattress on the floor. Jon squints. Almost looks like it’s been stained with blood. He’d heard about the abandoned developed houses behind school property but had never seen them. It occurs to him then, how little he actually knows of Winterfell, how little he’s seen. 

“We used to come here often when we were kids,” Sansa says. “Until tenth grade, or something.” 

Jon nods. 

Sansa kicks at an empty beer can, causing it to fly across the room. 

He watches her. 

“It’s such a waste,” she comments, looking around.   
“The littering?” 

She turns to look at him, her expression ponderous. 

“This house is about two times the size of mine,” she says. Jon feels embarrassed that he hadn’t even noticed, too preoccupied with the dirt. “There’s about a dozen more here, and the government or whoever just left them. Just like that. All that money, all that potential—” Her mouth twists. 

“That’s capitalism for you,” Jon says. His eyes are drawn back to the mattress. It’s a sharp reminder how different their lives are – how, besides them being on opposite ends of the social hierarchy at school, there’s this entire other aspect to their lives that looms ahead of them and changes everything. Highschool really is a bubble, isn’t it? He thinks. 

“Yeah,” she murmurs, frowning. “The fuckers.” 

Jon laughs a little, though it’s not really that funny. 

“What is it?” she asks, her hands laying limp at her sides. 

Jon looks back at that stupid bloody mattress. 

“Joffrey called me a freak of nature at lunch today,” he says, folding his arms over his chest. “Said I was pathetic and that’s why my father didn’t give me his name.” 

Her face folds, just a little. 

“I’m sorry he said that to you,” she murmurs, maintain their distance. 

Jon is glad for it. He doesn’t want her too close right now—he feels raw and vulnerable, almost like his heart is bleeding out. 

“Is that what you think of me?” he asks in a small voice. 

He frowns, swallows loudly. He wishes he were stronger than this, sometimes, wasn’t so vulnerable, that he was more like his dad or the other men he sees everywhere. 

“No,” she says. Jon looks into her eyes. She bites down on her lip. “They don’t even think that themselves,” she settles on. “Joffrey is just jealous that you’re smart and rich, and—well, they all think you look down on them.” 

“Right,” he says. That’s the reason. Because of the money, which isn’t even mine, which belongs to my family, whose name I don’t even share. He feels close to tears. 

“What would you do if I didn’t want to do this anymore?” he asks suddenly. “If I found someone else.” 

She blinks. 

“What, if you didn’t want to see me anymore?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Honestly, I’d be surprised because it seems like you enjoy it. Boys usually tend to enjoy sex without that many strings attached.”

Jon feels as though she’s slapped him. He feels as though his entire body is trembling, like the world is about to crumble at his feet. He wants to rewind this conversation, keep his bloody mouth shut, whatever it takes to make her happy. 

“You know,” he begins. It hurts to speak. “I would lay down here, anywhere, and you could do whatever you wanted to me.” A pause. “Do you know that?”

She looks away, as though unable to confront this truth that he suspects she’s known for quite a while. 

“What do you want from me?” she questions. “It’s just—what do you want me to do? Beg for you? Guys always mock girls who actually ask about the relationship – call them desperate and insane, or overemotional.”

“That’s not what I want,” he confesses, rubbing at his throat. “I wasn’t trying to do that.” 

She sighs loudly and closes her eyes. 

“I know,” she says, eventually. She moves closer to him, her eyes downcast. “Sorry, it’s just—I don’t know how to talk about these things well, and when you mentioned someone else, I just—I don’t know, I thought that you liked me.” 

“I do like you.” 

She reaches for his hand, though she keeps her gaze to the ground. 

“If,” she says carefully. Her face contorts as she struggles to either find the words or get them out. “If you didn’t want to do this anymore, I’d be upset.” 

“Would you miss me?” he asks quietly. 

“Yeah.” Her blue eyes are gentle. “A lot.”   
Jon nods. They reach out for each other at the same time, their bodies pressed flat against each other. Her arm circles his neck, his, her waist. He feels safe with her, whole, like she has the ability to hold him together. Jon thinks to himself that most people spend their entire lives without feeling so close to someone. 

“Come on,” she says eventually. “Let’s go.” 

They hold hands on the way back to the car. 

\--

In May, on a bright, sunny Saturday, Sansa drives them to the beach. She doesn’t take them to the one closest to town, where all of her friends might be, but to a smaller one the next town over. She packs some snacks in a bag, sunscreen and a book. It’s too cold to swim, just yet, but it’ll still be nice. 

She picks up Jon at the bottom of the driveway, out of sight from the house, because apparently his father was home, for once. Sansa isn’t quite sure how she feels about Rhaegar – she had disliked him already because he paid her father shit, but she’s begun to notice how empty Jon’s house is all the time, how he can just spend the night and not have his phone ring or messages asking where he was. 

It irks her, but Jon never talks about. Not really. 

She laughs when he plays ABBA on the aux cord. They’re both terrible singers, but that doesn’t stop them. 

They park a little bit away from the beach, behind some trees, and have sex in the back of her car. Afterwards, Sansa leans against the door, Jon lying back into her chest. As always, her hands reach to play with his curls. She likes them long, she thinks. She tells him and he smiles, eyes closed. 

He trusts her completely. Sansa knows this. It’s in the way he tucks into her at night, the way he looks at her when they have sex. It’s odd, having someone be dependent on her, having the power in the relationship. She doesn’t know what to do with it, at times. She’s never had this before, never felt this way. His eyes are so wide and vulnerable sometimes that Sansa feels as though he strips her bare with just a single look. 

It unnerves her, sometimes, how he makes her question certain things she had thought unchangeable. 

Later, they make their way down to the beach. They sit close together, her arm tucked around his. She leans her head against his shoulder, sighs in contentment when he begins to rub the back of her neck, near the start of her spine.   
“Tommen asked me to be part of the fundraising committee for the dance,” he tells her. 

Sansa keeps her eyes closed. 

“Oh, yeah?” 

“Yup,” he replies. “So I’ll be there at the event. Would be bad of me to reject a rare offer of friendship.” 

She laughs lightly. 

“Fair enough.” 

He puts his chin on top of her head, holding her closer. 

“It won’t be a problem, will it? Won’t be weird?” 

“No,” she says slowly, eager to be rid of reminders of the outside world. “Not at all.” 

“Good,” he says. She can hear the smile in his voice. “Wouldn’t want to make it difficult for you to resist me.” 

“Right,” she says, pulling away a little. She smiles to let him know she’s not mad. 

She extends her legs out and he almost instantly rearranges himself so he’s lying his head on her thighs, staring up at the sky. 

“You’re like a cat,” she tells him, running a hand through his curls. 

“You’ve told me that before,” he replies. “Clearly doesn’t bother you too much.” 

He closes his eyes, breathes in deeply. Sansa has always loved the smell of the sea. 

She looks down at him and thinks. Thinks about how he always recommends new books for her to read that he thinks she’ll enjoy, how he’s mostly right with his selections. How he genuinely enjoys talking about politics and injustices in the world, not just to be politically correct. How he’s perhaps the most vulnerable person she’s ever met. 

It scares her, suddenly, the pressure around her heart. She jolts at the touch of his hand. 

“You okay?” he asks. 

Sansa feels a familiar headache begin to form. 

“Yeah,” she says, feeling as though she’s been in this position before. “Just fine.” 

\--

It’s Saturday night, and Jon is staring at himself in the mirror. His wild curls have been slicked back into something someone could consider moderately tame. He’s dressed in a white button-down shirt that actually fits him well, and a pair of black dress pants. His father had gotten him multiple pairs a few months back. To look professional, he had told him, as though that were something Jon would ever feel comfortable wearing. Well. He is now, so maybe Rhaegar had a point. 

He reaches for his tie and knots it. He hopes his cologne isn’t too strong. 

It’s warm enough that he doesn’t bother with a jacket. He goes to the kitchen for a glass of water before he goes and hides his sigh when he finds his father and Rhaenys eating at the dinner table. 

“Where are you going?” Rhaegar asks, visibly surprised. 

“Fundraiser for the dance,” he answers, trying to ease the tension in his shoulders. “I’m on the committee.” 

Rhaenys scoffs. 

“Right,” she says. Jon can feel her eyes narrow critically on the side of his skull. “You look ridiculous.” 

Jon flinches as he closes the fridge, hopes the movement covers it. 

“You are dressed quite formally,” his father adds. 

Jon abandons his glass of water on the island, pats his pockets to make sure he has his wallet. 

“I’m going to go,” he says. “My taxi should be here. I’ll be back later.” 

The house is silent when he shuts the door behind him. 

The bar where they’re selling the tickets also doubles as a place for wedding receptions, apparently. It’s a little outside of the main street in town, and bigger than some of the pubs most of the kids at their school go to. Or at least Jon thinks it is – he hasn’t been inside any of them. 

The lights are low when he enters, a table set outside the club with a small banner. He recognises the boys from his class – Joffrey, Loras, Tommen, Theon and others. They’re all dressed similarly to Jon. Tommen is the only one who smiles when he catches sight of him. He’s the one in charge of the committee this year, since the girls switched things around. 

Jon can’t help but smile back; Tommen has always been one of the more decent ones from school. Sansa said so too. He explains to Jon how the ticket system works, who to let into the dancefloor and who not, how much the tickets are being sold for. Joffrey and Loras roll their eyes from behind them. Jon thinks they’re already drunk. 

“Do you want a drink?” he asks Tommen, tilting his head to the bar. The doors to the dancefloor have been opened, so the music blares out into the hall. 

“Yeah,” the blonde-haired boy replies. “Thanks, Jon.” 

“What would you like?” 

“Gin and tonic, please. I’ll pay you back—” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Jon says, waving his hand. 

When he gets to the bar, he orders the same. This doesn’t seem like the kind of place to drink red wine. By the time he gets back, two drinks in hand, Joffrey is complaining loudly. 

“Where are they?” he huffs, scowling. “Margaery said they’d be here twenty minutes ago.” 

“Please,” Loras says, rolling his eyes. “They hadn’t even begun to get ready by the time you picked me up. Part of this whole reversing the patriarchy bullshit.” 

Boys pulled this shit for years, Jon is tempted to say. Grow up. He takes a sip of his drink instead. He pulls his phone out under the table, after selling a few tickets to tipsy teenagers he vaguely recognises. 

Hey, he texts Sansa. You guys on your way?

Almost instantly, she starts to respond. 

Yeah, it reads. Alayne almost greened out so we had to take care of her. Turns out having almost ten girls getting ready in the same spot is not a good idea. 

Jon chuckles under his breath. 

We’ll be there in like ten minutes. The other girls wanted to pick up someone else. 

“I’m texting Sansa,” Loras declares. 

Jon briefly imagines telling him that she said she’d be there in ten minutes. It would be a casual revelation that would shock them all, wipe that smirk off his face. The thought warms his chest, their secret making him feel, for once, that he has an edge over those around him, some kind of advantage. 

He finishes his drink and then quickly orders him and Tommen another. The world seems only vaguely fuzzy. Jon sees the group of girls approaching through the glass doors and his heart seems to skip a beat. His eyes are drawn to Sansa almost instantly. She’s hovering near the back, talking animatedly with Jeyne Poole. She’s dressed in a short black dress, her lips painted a ruby red, her eyes covered in shimmery eyeshadow. 

Jon wants her to look at him. Wants to admire her, to pull her in and kiss her. He flexes his hands underneath the table. The rest of the boys at the table stand and approach them. Loras leans forward and ruffles his sister’s hair, making her scowl. 

“Took you long enough,” Joffrey scowls, snaking an arm around Margaery’s waist. She sways dangerously, presses a loud, wet kiss to his cheek as she snuggles in closer. 

“Sorry,” she squeals. Her eyes slide over to him. “Jon,” she says, eyes widening. “You clean up nicely—we can actually see your face with your hair like that.” Jon hears her mutter something like that rather hot, actually, as Joffrey drags her through the doors behind them. 

He can’t help but stiffen, just a little. When he turns his gaze back to the front, she’s already looking at him. Something warm spreads in his stomach, heavy and intoxicating. He doesn’t know if it’s the beer that makes him stare back, unabashed. He wants her to want him. Craves the validation of knowing he’s worthy, desirable, even. 

He watches her make small talk with Loras, Theon and Jeyne, but her eyes keep on sliding back to him. Fuck, he thinks. He wonders briefly if they’ll meet up later tonight. 

“Jon,” Tommen says. The other boy has managed to sell at least two dozen tickets in the time he’s been spaced out. “A little help? We’re almost done.” 

Jon nods hastily and gets to work, writing down names, student numbers and eating preferences. Dozens of names quickly fill out the sheet. He imagines momentarily what it will be like, at the dance, all hundred plus something of them. He flushes a little. 

Jon meets her gaze as she walks past with her friends. He wants to kiss her. Wants to snuggle into her neck and breathe in the smell of her soap, of lemon and strawberries. A few people buy tickets and then go out for a smoke. When they leave, Tommen asks if he can help close up the stand. They do, along with the money box, and put it in a safe in the managers office. 

“No one else should be coming,” Tommen shrugs. “If they do, they can just buy them at school.” 

Jon nods quietly. He wonders if the other boy knows he hasn’t even bought a ticket yet. They walk into the dancefloor together, all flashing lights and music blasting. The air is heady, thick with the smell of sweat and alcohol. He catches sight of Joffrey and Margaery making out wildly in the corner, the latter sucking a bruise into the former’s neck. Tommen talks to him conversationally, because apparently his social standing is now decent enough to do so, and they join a little group with Myrcella and a few others. 

He catches sight of Sansa in the middle of the dancefloor, Loras, Jeyne and Theon beside her. They’re all dancing together, laughing and sweaty, and then Sansa catches his eye. She doesn’t respond when Loras bends down to whisper something in her ear, just maintains their gaze. 

Tommen leans over and yells in his ear: “She’s been watching you the whole time.” 

Loras saunters over after a few minutes, scowling a little. Jon bites down on his lip to hide his smile. After thirty minutes or so, Tommen asks if he wants to get some air with the rest, so he nods his assent. Jeyne, Theon and Sansa slide up next to them, the first two chattering excitedly. Sansa falls back a little so she’s beside him, their pinkies brushing. Jon glances at her in the darkness, but she’s staring steadfastly ahead. He wonders if she feels it too. 

“Ros!” Theon cries out, extending his arms to wrap around the girl. She seems older than all of them, perhaps in her early to mid-twenties, dressed in a strapless red gown and dark, heavy eye makeup. Jon shrinks back a little at the unfamiliar face. 

The woman – Ros – pulls back from Theon and pats his face, pecking him briefly on the lips. Jon frowns, but no one else seems to be put off. She goes around greeting the rest before her eyes land on him. 

“Well, well,” she drawls, pulling up in front of him, close enough to make his stomach clench. “Who do we have here?” 

“That’s Jon,” Theon says. 

Jeyne adds: “Looks rather nice when he makes an effort.” 

Ros’ eyes glint. “Yes, indeed,” she says, placing her hand on his chest. “My, wanna go for a dance, handsome?” 

“No, thank you.” 

“Not even a ride?” Her hand starts to slide lower and lower. Jon tries to step away. 

“No, thanks.” 

“Sure you want to miss out?”

Her hand reaches between his pants, right over his cock, and squeezes. Hard. 

Jon breaks away, eyes wide, cheeks red. 

“What the—” he breaks off, bewildered. The room suddenly feels too hot, the air unbreathable. He pushes past everyone else for the door. The cool night air washes over him instantly. His breathing is loud and uneven. He crouches by the wall, tries to put his head between his legs. 

He hears the sound of footsteps. A hand grasps his forearm, another is placed lightly on his shoulders. Jon looks at them. Tommen and Myrcella. 

There are others too. 

“Listen, sorry about that,” Theon says, clearing his throat. “Ros can be a bit much when she’s drunk.” 

“Are you okay?” Myrcella whispers to him. 

Jon nods. 

“She’s fucking inappropriate, Theon,” Tommen snaps, voice low. 

Someone huffs. Jon looks up in time to see Loras rolling his eyes. 

“It’s not a big deal,” he says. “Right, Sansa? It was just a laugh.” 

Sansa stays quiet, keeps her gaze right on him. She doesn’t even seem like she heard Loras. 

“Yeah, Ros does it all the time,” Theon adds, rubbing the side of his neck. 

“And you all put up with it?” Myrcella asks, scowling. She returns her gaze to Jon. “I’m sorry she did that,” she tells him. Tommen nods his assent. 

“Gosh, can we go back inside and get over the dramatics?” Loras asks, sighing. 

Jon feels too big and too small for his body all at once. 

“Sansa, come on—” 

“Jesus, would the both of you just fuck off?” Sansa snaps. 

Jon has never heard Sansa’s voice be that low and hard before. He glances up at her, finds her brow tightened as she narrows her eyes at the two boys. He sees Myrcella exchange a look with Tommen from the corner of his eye, but he can’t see her expression. 

Sansa turns to look at him. 

“Are you alright?” she asks. 

He nods. 

“Do you need a lift home? I’m driving.” 

She tilts her head towards the carpark, as if he hasn’t been in her car countless of times before. As if they haven’t had sex in her car. 

She walks up to him and extends her hands out. 

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s get you out of here.” 

She doesn’t seem afraid, as far as Jon can tell. Her gaze is still furious, her shoulders still taunt. She means this. Loras scoffs loudly and walks away, Theon close behind. 

Tommen tugs Jon up with Myrcella rising beside him. 

“Thank you,” he murmurs. “For being so kind.” 

“Of course—” Myrcella closes her eyes. “There’s no need to thank us, Jon.” She pats him on the shoulder comfortingly. 

Sansa waits as he pulls himself away and then she leads him to her car. 

The drive is quiet, Jon leaning his head against the window. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, swiping at his eyes. “Fuck.” 

He can feel Sansa look at him. 

“I just feel so embarrassed.” 

Another tear slips down his cheek. Fuck. He wishes he were one of those people who would just stop crying but he’s not. He’s a boy who cries, who fuck’s up, who’s overdramatic—

“Hey,” Sansa says, careful to keep her gaze on the road. “You did nothing wrong, you hear me? Nothing. Ros is just a fucking creep—” Her hands flex on the wheel. “And Loras and Theon are idiots.” 

Jon nods, a lump in his throat. 

“Do you want to come to my place for a bit?” 

Jon looks at her. 

“Isn’t Ned home?” he asks. “Won’t he mind?” 

She shrugs. 

“He’s probably in bed by now. Besides, he’s usually pretty cool about these kinds of things, and you don’t have to stay the night. We can just hang out for a bit and then I can take you home.” 

“I can’t ask you to do that—” 

“I’m offering.” 

She takes one of her hands off the wheel and extends it in his direction. Jon instinctively holds onto it. She squeezes his hand tightly. 

“Okay,” he whispers, looking out the window. “Okay.” 

-

When they get to her room, Jon quietly sits down on the bed. He unknots his tie and shrugs it over his head. He holds onto it limply. 

“I need to go and take my makeup off,” Sansa whispers, standing between his legs. Her hands lift up to caress his cheeks. “I’ll be back in a moment, yeah?” 

“Kay,” he murmurs. 

She presses a kiss to his head and slowly slips away. Jon quietly gets undressed and neatly folds his clothes in a pile and leaves it on her desk. In his boxers, Jon sits down on the bed, rubbing his shoulders. The A.C. is on. A few moments later, Sansa returns, the light from the hall blinding his eyes. She shuts it off, encasing them in darkness, her dress in her hands. She must have taken some pajamas with her. She flings the dress onto her chair and he hears her breathe out a chuckle when she catches sight of his folded clothes. 

“What?” he asks.   
He sees her shake her head in the darkness. 

“Nothing,” she says teasingly. “You’re just so organized about certain stuff.” 

Jon huffs out a small laugh, but it dies quickly. Sansa moves to pull open her curtains, so some of the moonlight and streetlights slightly lighten the room to the point where he can clearly see her face. 

“Jon,” she murmurs, when she catches sight of his face. 

He lowers his gaze to the ground and she instantly moves so that she’s sitting on the bed, moving over to lie down so her side is against the wall. 

“Come here,” she says, opening up her arms. 

Jon lies down and curls up against her, burying his face in the side of her neck. Her arms close around him. 

“Fuck,” he breathes, shoulders shaking. 

Her hands rub the back of his neck. 

“It’s okay Jon,” she says. “It’s okay to cry.” 

It takes a while for the trembling to subside and when it does, they both gradually move under the covers. They lie there a moment. 

“You went out with Theon, before,” he says. 

Sansa’s head turns to look at him. 

“Not really,” she says. “We were just stupid kids with hormones, and we knew each other for ages.” She shrugs. “Wanted to experiment.” 

“And Joffrey?” 

“Not really,” she says. “We made out once or twice last year at a party. Nothing particularly spectacular. Wouldn’t say there were feelings involved or anything.”

Jon knows that Margaery has been into Joffrey ever since she and Robb Tully broke up. But something itches inside of him. 

“Would you. .” he starts, heart thumping. “Would you say your feelings are involved with me?” 

He turns his head away from the ceiling to stare at her. He can feel the flutter of her lashes, the warmth of her breath. 

“Yes,” she tells him. “Obviously.” 

Jon frowns. 

“Who is it obvious to?” he can’t help but ask. 

He shifts a little, stares back up at the ceiling. He wonders if she’s searching for the right words, or if she doesn’t have anything, she wants to say at all. 

“Sansa,” he says. 

“Yeah?” 

“You’d never hit a kid, would you?” 

“God no, why would you ask that?” 

Jon exhales shakily, almost with relief. 

“I don’t know,” he says, but he does know. “My grandfather used to hit my dad.” 

It’s the first time he’s ever breathed the words aloud. 

“Jesus, I’m sorry,” she says. “Did he ever hit you?” 

“Yeah,” he says, even though he’s shaking his head, even though he starts trembling again. 

“Hey,” she says, as he buries his face in his hands. 

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” he says again, the only thing he can say. 

He feels her grab at his hands and tug them away from his face. She looks him directly in the eye, hovering above him. 

“I would never hurt you, Jon,” she tells him, clutching onto one of his hands. “You make me really happy.” 

That’s impossible—

“I love you,” she tells him, squeezing his hand even tighter. “And I’m not just saying that, Jon, I really do. I didn’t even—” she stops, closes her eyes tightly. “I mean it. I love you.” 

Jon buries his face in her shoulder, and her arms close around him once again, anchoring him to her. He feels unbearably light, like her words have taken all the heaviness and weight out of him. And yet strangely, this feels like the realest, most grounded moment of his life. Jon knows even now that he’ll remember this moment for the rest of his life; will recall the smell of her hair, the feel of her skin, how safe he feels beside her. He feels as though she’s pressed play on his life after years of being on pause. 

“Thank you,” he whispers against her skin. 

\--

“Shit.” 

Sansa snaps her eyes wide open at the sound of Jon’s voice. He fumbles out of bed, clutching onto his phone. 

“What?” she says, propping herself up on her hands. “What is it?” 

“I slept through my alarm,” he says, reaching for his clothes. “I have to get back, my father—” 

“I can drive you back,” she says, rubbing at her eyes. 

“No, they’ll recognize your car, I’ll get a cab.” 

Sansa jumps out of bed and starts to search for some clothes. It’s Sunday, so she isn’t quite sure where her da is. They stumble out of her bedroom, Jon pulling his tie over his head. Despite him folding his clothes, they still look rumpled and wrinkled. As they bound down the stairs, his taxi a minute away, Sansa hears the front door unlock. 

They both freeze as her dad enters the doorway, a bag of groceries in his hands. 

“I realize I forgot to buy buns for the burgers I took out yesterday,” he says, closing the door. “So I—” 

His eyes widen a little at the sight of Jon. Sansa feels like she wants to disappear down into the earth. Usually when she snuck a boy out of her house, she was better at it. He’d only caught Willas, and that was because he slipped down the last step and bruised his back. 

“Jon,” he greets, struggling to hide a smile. 

“Hello Mr. Stark,” Jon says, continuing down the stairs. Sansa can see his cheeks redden from where she follows behind him. “So sorry to intrude, but my cab is here, so I must go.” He continues on babbling as he opens the door, struggling to slip on his shoes properly. “So sorry,” he says again. “Bye, have a nice day—” and then the door shuts behind him. 

Sansa looks at her father, who instantly bursts into laughter, shaking his head as he walks into the kitchen. She follows him. 

“Hi there Sansa,” he says, putting down the bag of groceries on the counter. Instantly, Sansa begins to unpack its contents as her da puts the kettle on. She can hear him snicker even more. 

“Da,” she sighs, putting the buns in the breadbin. 

“Sorry,” he says, sounding anything but. “But did you really think I didn’t know?” 

Sansa freezes, her right arm buried in the bag as she struggles to latch on to the bag of pasta at the bottom. 

“He’s barely there anymore when I work, and he always comes back when I finish. And I know you’ve been having a boy over I can smell his cologne in your room.” His nose wrinkles. “And on your sheets.” 

“Da,” Sansa says crossly, flushing. 

Her da turns off the kettle and pours the steaming water into his awaiting mug. He shrugs after he takes a sip of his tea. 

“As long as you use protection, I don’t care,” he comments, taking another gulp. “I think our conversation about sex education went well enough the first time.” 

“It did,” she says, and it must be rather frosty because he laughs again. 

“Calm down, Sansa,” he says. She can hear the smile in his voice. “I happen to like Jon. He’s a good lad, much better than that Garlan boy from last year.” 

“Yeah, okay,” she snorts. She puts the bag away in a cupboard after she’s done. “It’s not like you’re going to go telling someone, are you?” 

Almost instantly, her da looks taken aback. 

“What?” he asks. “Why shouldn’t I tell anyone?” 

Sansa rubs the side of her neck. 

“Because,” she states. “That would cause a great deal of trouble for me.” She pauses, then adds: “And Jon.” 

“Why? Does he have a girlfriend or something?” 

Sansa almost blanches. 

“God no,” she says, mildly offended. 

He lifts his hands up innocently, though his eyes are still narrowed. 

“Just, don’t tell anyone, yeah?” 

“This all sounds quite suspicious,” her da replies. “I mean, should I be worried or something—” 

“No, Jesus, Da,” she says, flustered. 

“I don’t even want to know,” he says, taking pity on her. He shakes his head. “Don’t worry Sansa, I have more to talk of with my friends and coworkers than your sex life.” 

She relaxes a little. 

“Thank you,” she says, walking out of the kitchen. 

A few minutes after she returns to her room, her phone buzzes. She hasn’t opened it since last night. She has multiple messages from Margaery, Jeyne, and from a few of the boys too. She opens the one from Myrcella. 

You get him home okay? 

Sansa likes it and leaves it at that. 

There’s another from Jon. 

Got back okay! 

She sighs and flops down onto her bed, back first. She turns off her phone and closes her eyes. 

Sansa has this horrible habit of saying something without even knowing if she means it. She’ll panic and when she can’t find the right words, as she so often struggles to do, she’ll say the first thing that comes to mind. I love you. She said she meant it. She remembers now how fast her heart was beating, how her throat had locked after the words left her throat, how she felt her entire world was collapsing in on her until he responded. She couldn’t lie that she didn’t feel relieved when he whispered thank you to her. That a massive weight hadn’t lifted off her shoulders when she’d told him she loved him. As if it had been something weighing down on her for a while. 

Did she mean it? Sansa suddenly isn’t sure. She’d like to think that wasn’t something she’d lie about. Her phone buzzes again. Sighing, she turns it on. It’s from Margaery. 

Dude what the fuck? Answer your phone. 

Sansa closes her eyes and counts to ten. 

\--

When Sansa arrives at school the next day, her friends are sitting on the benches near the locker. 

Loras rolls his eyes when he sees her. 

“Well, well, well,” Margaery says, staring at her. “Look who’s returned from the dead.” 

Sansa fumbles with the lock. 

“Stop with the theatrics, yeah?” she tosses over her shoulder. 

“Sansa, is it true?” Joffrey asks. “Did you really fuck Jon Snow?” 

“Fuck’s sake,” she mutters. Her lock slips out of her hands and falls to the ground. The door of her locker bangs against the next one loudly. 

Sansa turns to look at Joffrey. There’s a hickey on the side of his neck, no doubt from Margaery. 

“No,” she says simply, rolling her eyes. 

“Come now, Sansa,” Margaery drawls. “Did you have sex with him? Maybe an orgasm will make him lighten up.” 

Shut up, she wants to scream. 

“I didn’t have sex with anybody,” she says, bending down to pick up her lock. She has to hold onto her locker door to stop her hands from trembling. 

“Right,” Joffrey says. 

Sansa wishes Tommen and Myrcella were here. 

“Come on, Sansa, Ros was just drunk,” Jeyne tells her. “You didn’t have to tell Loras and Theon to fuck off.”   
As if on cue, Loras huffs and walks away. Sansa tries to ignore it. 

“Ros is a fucking creep,” she says. She looks at Jeyne after her shoulder. “I was just being nice. That’s all.” 

Joffrey laughs. 

“Jeez, Sansa, are you going to start sitting with him at lunch too? Is he your pity case, is that it?” 

Sansa closes her locker and slides the lock in place. 

Joffrey smirks at her. 

“Come now, let us know!” he calls after her, as she walks away. “Are you going to ask him to the dance, Sansa? Now that you’re both so close!” 

She can hear Margaery laugh. 

“God, can you imagine?” her friend says. “So fucking weird—” 

Sansa quickens her steps. 

She locks herself in a cubicle in the girl’s bathroom. Her heart is beating so fast she fears it will jump out of her mouth. She can’t breathe. She slides to the floor and puts her head between her legs. Fuck, she thinks, tears piercing her eyes. Fuck. Her feet start tapping the floor.

One, she thinks. Two. Three. Four. She pictures Jon. How he beamed at her when she told him she’d apply to Highgarden. How he looked when he ranted about some foreign film. She remembers the sound of Joffrey and Margaery’s laugh, how Loras looked as he stalked away. She feels as though the world has been yanked out from under her and she’s spinning hopelessly into the abyss. Her palms are sweaty. 

Gradually, her breathing begins to even. She swipes at her eyes and reaches inside her backpack for her deodorant. She applies it and tosses it back in her bag. She can hear the bell ring. Okay, she thinks, standing. 

Sansa reaches for the lock, and then promptly turns around and throws up into the toilet. 

\--

The first time Jon sees Sansa after she said she loved him she tells Jon she asked Loras Tyrell to the school dance happening next month during lunchtime. They’re sitting in his bedroom after school, with their uniforms still on. She says this like it’s something that can’t be helped, like it’s inevitable, and Jon feels his heart sink to his stomach. 

“It’s not a big deal or anything,” she tells him. “No romantic feelings at all, but I just wanted you to know before—” she stops, rubs at the side of her neck. Jon knows her well enough now to know she does this when she’s nervous, when she doesn’t know what to say. Words don’t come easy to me, she had told him once. 

“Before I found out from someone else,” he finishes. He can voice what she’s too uncomfortable to admit. 

“Yeah, that.” 

They stare at each other.

Jon feels oddly hollow. He’s never looked at Sansa before and felt nothing; he’s not even sure he feels nothing now. He feels like he’s stuck between feeling too much and nothing at all. He’s even more fearful that if he talks too much, he’ll cry. 

“Do you like him?” he asks. 

“No, of course not,” Sansa says. “Jon, I—” 

She stops. 

Jon watches her as she searches for the words she wants, words he has no desire to help her find. 

“I think if you like him you should tell me.” 

“If I did, I would, but I don’t.” 

“Right,” he says, bitterness souring his mouth. 

He can’t help it; he can’t help the crushing waves of humiliation suddenly threatening to overcome him. She’s humiliated him so badly hasn’t she? She was just waiting to see how much he would be willing to degrade himself to keep her happy, for any bit of her affection she was willing to give. And he was a fool to ever have believed her.

Jon bites down on his lip. 

“Do you really think I’m that insatiable?” Sansa says. “I do still have you.” 

She must know she’s said something wrong, because instantly any tentative smile vanishes from her face. 

“Jon, that was a joke,” she says. 

“I didn’t get it.” 

“You say you’re mad about me asking Loras to the dance but I don’t think that’s what this is,” she says. 

Jon laughs. He can’t help it. It makes his shoulders shake and tears pierce his eyes with how strong it is. 

“Really?” he asks. “Then what is it?” 

He can’t read the look on her face.

“That’s what I thought.”

He thinks about how nervous he was before she arrived. I love you too, he had wanted to tell her. 

“You should go,” he says finally, unable to bear the sight of her any longer. 

She stares at him. 

“Go.” 

For a moment, it looks as though she’s about to say something but then she leaves his room without another word. The instant Jon hears the front door close behind her, he falls back onto the bed and cries. 

\--

Sansa is driving her father to the shops after she left Jon’s house when she tells him. 

“I asked Loras Tyrell to the dance today,” she comments, keeping her eyes on the road. 

From the corner of her eye, she can see her da glance at her. 

“What?” he asks, as if he misheard, or didn’t believe what she said. 

“I asked Loras to the dance at lunch,” Sansa repeats. 

Her father takes a moment to process this and then nods to himself. 

“Pull over,” he tells her. 

Sansa looks at him. 

“What?”

“Pull over right there.” 

It was right next to a gas station on the edge of town. Sansa does as he asks, mildly perplexed, and as she opens her mouth to question him, he beats her right to it. 

“Who is Jon going to the dance with?” he asks, his voice hard. 

Sansa feels herself shrink a little. 

“I don’t know,” she says, looking above the wheel. 

“You don’t know,” he says. “Tell me, this is a girl ask boys dance, correct?” 

Sansa nods. 

“Right, I knew that. I suppose it would be fine to go alone, if you had friends to go with. But if you don’t, well, I guess you just don’t go. Especially if you don’t have a date. Like Jon.” 

“I suppose.” 

“Jesus, Sansa,” her da says, shaking his head. “What’s the issue? Hmm? What are you so afraid of?” 

Sansa doesn’t say anything. 

“Honestly, what is it? Are you worried about what people will say if they find out you liked him?” 

A small sound escapes her throat. 

“So that’s the arrangement,” he says, with a hint of disgust. “You and him have sex pretty much every day after school—” 

“Da!” 

“And he’s not allowed to say anything to anyone?” 

“What does that even mean?” Sansa asks. “Allowed?” 

Her da just stares at her with cool, grey eyes. 

“Do you even talk to him at school?”

“Da—” 

“In front of your friends, are you nice to him? Do you even say hello?” 

Sansa gulps loudly. 

“Can I say what I think of you? I think your behaviour is absolutely disgraceful and I’m ashamed of you. I thought I raised you to treat people better than this.” He shakes his head. 

Sansa thinks she would feel better if she’d gotten punched in the stomach. 

“I need to get out of this car,” he says, taking off his seatbelt. 

“What are you doing Da stay in the car—" 

“I’m taking the bus home—”

“You’re not being fair or reasonable Da, just listen—”

He opens the door and turns to stare at her. 

“If I stay in this car, I’ll only say things I’ll regret.” 

And then he slams the door and walks away briskly. 

Sansa is tempted to drive after him and yell at him through the window, scream at him to get back in the car. He didn’t know anything. He didn’t. 

Sansa sits there a long while. 

\--

Jon doesn’t go to school the next day. 

“Jon Snow,” Mr. Baelish says, eyes glinting. “Jon Snow?” 

Instinctively, Sansa glances at his spot near the window. He’s not there. She feels something tighten in her stomach, feels as though all the air has been sucked out of the room. 

At lunch, she messages him. 

Hey! Are you okay? Let me know

He never responds. 

Lunch ticks by incredibly slowly and Sansa can’t help looking at her phone every few moments; she’ll think ten minutes have passed between each time, but whenever she looks not more than a minute has passed. 

With each second, she feels him drift farther and farther away from her. She feels like she’s been tossed in the middle of the ocean, no land in sight, surrounded by endless blue water, drifting slowly, slowly down to the dark bottom. 

Her hands clench around her soda can. She thinks of the sound of his laughter, yesterday. Bitter, hollow, defensive. 

Fuck, she thinks. Fuck. 

\-- 

His father yells at him for ages. There’s two nights in a row where his dinner is scraped into the rubbish, as if starvation is going to make him see his father’s point of view. It doesn’t work. Rhaenys calls him pathetic and a few other choice words more times than he can count. 

Jon still doesn’t go back to school. 

He manages to get a decent enough system going on. He wakes around nine, swims for about an hour in the pool, naps then spends a few hours studying before taking another nap and then continuing. It works for him. He can study how he likes; can look out the window whenever he wants and take a break. There is no oppressive regime to keep him in place. Besides, it’s near the end of May, there’s only four weeks left of school before exams. He can email his assignments to his teachers; he finished his last in class/mock test last week. 

He enjoys the solitude. The lack of people. It keeps his melancholy company. 

One day, after taking a particularly long midday nap, Jon jolts awake at the sound of banging downstairs. For a moment, he panics, and then he remembers: Ned. He’d been steadily avoiding him for ages; most days he plugged his headphones in and blasted music so loud he thought he would go deaf, or he took a nap. 

Jon rubs at his eyes and looks at his nightstand. A dirty plate, filled with crumbs from his morning sandwich, and a mug, greet him. Slowly, he climbs out of bed, grabs hold of the dirty dishes and makes his way down the stairs. 

He walks into the kitchen with slight hesitance. Ned whirls around from the sink to greet him, a bucket near his feet. 

“Hi, Jon,” Ned says, his eyes soft. 

Jon puts down the plate and mug on the counter. 

“Hi Ned,” he greets, his voice rusty from lack of use. 

He’s missed Ned, he realises, rubbing at his throat. He feels oddly self-conscious standing there in sweatpants and a sweaty t-shirt, his curls unbrushed. 

“I hear you haven’t been in school,” Ned says. 

Jon gulps loudly. 

“Yeah I haven’t,” he admits, staring at the floor. “I find I get a lot done when I stay at home. Studying for finals is better this way.” 

“Whatever works for you,” Ned says. “I’m sure you’ll do great.” 

Jon nods. He’s afraid what he’ll find if he looks at Ned’s face. There could be anger or disgust or pity. Jon can’t bear any of it. 

“Ned—” 

“I hear you’ve been ignoring my daughter’s messages,” the man in question interrupts. 

Jon feels his back straighten. 

“Yeah,” he says, finally summoning the courage to look up. “I guess I have.” 

“Good for you,” Ned tells him. “She doesn’t deserve you.” 

Jon feels oddly close to tears. 

“It’s okay,” he replies, shrugging as he bites down on his lip. “She didn’t do anything that bad, really. Compared to everyone else at school, she was really nice to me. It isn’t her fault that—” He stops, wincing a little. It isn’t her fault she can’t love me, not really, not enough. It isn’t her fault I’m not normal. 

“Jon,” Ned murmurs. He steps around the bucket and stalks right to Jon, embracing him before he can say anything. 

Jon hasn’t been hugged by anyone other than Sansa in years. He clings to the man, breathing in the smell of pool chemicals and pine. 

“You deserve the world Jon,” Ned tells him. “I wish you believed that.” 

There’s a myriad of things he wants to say. You don’t know—I don’t know what I want—Sansa, I miss her and I shouldn’t and I’m so sad and hurt—

Instead, he tells Ned something he already told his daughter. 

“Thank you,” he whispers. 

A moment. 

“Ned?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Can you tell Sansa not to come here?” 

Ned chuckles and pulls away. 

“I’ve banned her from the house,” he tells Jon. “You have nothing to worry about there.” 

He wonders a moment if Ned thinks he’s pathetic, but the older man’s expression is only kind. 

“Thanks,” he repeats. “I mean it.” 

“Me too, Jon,” Ned replies. “I meant what I said too.” 

\--

It’s June, and Sansa watches as her father finishes talking with Mr. Baelish on the phone. No doubt discussing her ‘low spirits’. After Jon had disappeared from school, Sansa had experienced a deep melancholy. She ate lunch alone in the library more often than not, claiming she wanted to study, but really just spending the hour staring at her phone, at the little read on the messages she sent him. She went to parties and left first. 

It was like all the energy had been sapped out of her, like she was walking in a permanent state of grogginess. She had practically no appetite either. She could only manage to stomach her juice or a pop during the first week. Mr. Baelish had called her father at twice before. This was the third. 

“Yeah, I’m glad to hear that,” her Da says. “It was just stress, I’m sure. Exams are starting soon, and Uni responses depend on it. She’s doing a lot better, that much I know. I think she’s convinced herself that she’ll do fine.” 

Her Da glances at her. She takes a sip of her beer. It’s a Friday night and she’s supposed to be at a gathering at Margaery and Loras’. Because apparently, they never studied and expected others to do the same. 

Her da sighs as he places down the phone. 

She doesn’t have to go. She knows that. It would probably be better if she stayed home and studied. There’s no reason why she absolutely has to – she doesn’t even want to. 

“How is he?” she asks. 

Ned looks at her and opens his own beer. 

“Jon is doing well enough,” he says, because of course he knows she’s not talking about Baelish. “I see him a little.” 

Sansa stares at him, feels her gut tighten. 

“He’s a really sensitive person,” her Da tells her, as if she doesn’t know Jon better than anyone. “And you did something really unkind, Sansa. You hurt his feelings.” 

“Yeah, but don’t you think he’s overreacting a little though? Not responding to my messages, or calls—” Her Da had even gone so far as to ban her from going near the property, as though she were that desperate. Sansa likes to think she wouldn’t stoop so low. 

Her Da takes a sip of his beer. 

“You know,” Sansa says, frustrated. “You could try being on my side.” 

Her dad looks her in the eyes, and they’re kinder than they’ve been in weeks. 

“I don’t want to be on your side on this one, Sansa,” he says. 

“Right.” 

“I don’t think it’s bad a thing, that you’re feeling guilty about this.” 

Sansa scoffs a little and downs the rest of her beer. She puts it in the sink and pats her pockets for her keys. 

“Where are you going?” 

“Margaery’s.” 

“Is that wise—” 

“Don’t worry, I’m convinced I’ll do well on my exams,” she cuts in shortly. She pauses in the doorway. 

“I never said I was feeling bad about it,” she says, loud enough for him to hear. 

She carries on her way. 

She’d never thought she’d be one of those girls begging for a boy’s forgiveness. Desperate. She reaches in her purse for her cigarettes and lights one as she walks. She wasn’t desperate. 

She wasn’t. The thought makes her grit her teeth. Her da didn’t know what it was like. 

He didn’t. 

\--

His exams start at 9 am on a Tuesday. 

He throws on a pair of dark jeans and a black t-shirt. His uniform hangs abandoned in his closet. He has no intention of putting it on ever again. 

He has twenty minutes before the cab arrives, and so he forces some tea down his throat and a slice of toast. It feels like gravel against his throat. He goes outside by the pool and lets the sun wash over him. His backpack lies nearby. 

He only moves when he hears a car coming up the driveway. The cab is painted a bright yellow that hurts his eyes. 

The driver makes small chit chat as he takes him to school. 

“Final year for you?” 

“Yeah, got exams today.” 

“Really? Best of luck.” 

“Thanks,” Jon murmurs in reply. He manages to give the driver a small smile before he plugs in his earphones. The music soothes him.   
He tips the driver when they arrive and thanks him again as he shuts the door. 

The school building hasn’t changed. He’s not sure why he expected it would. Jon clutches the straps of his backpack and walks briskly to the front gates, head low. The exams are being held in the gymnasium, so that is where he goes. 

The doors are open, with students in uniforms filtering in and out of the room, looking panicked and nauseous. 

“Thought he was in a mental hospital,” he hears someone murmur as he walks by. 

Jon walks through the doors and finds a desk near the back end of the room. He makes sure he still has a clear view of the massive clock in the front of the room. There are a few people sitting in their seats near the front. Jon’s eyes scan the room and he freezes as a hint of red catches his eye, near the front-right of the room. 

From the corner of his eye, her head seems turned slightly in his direction, but he doesn’t try and make sure it’s true. He opens his backpack, takes out his pencils, pen, eraser and water bottle. He arranges the writing utensils neatly on his desk and places the water bottle under his chair. 

Ten minutes before the exam is set to start, he goes off the bathroom. He wonders a moment if she’ll follow. He’s relieved she doesn’t. 

People shoot him wide-eyed looks when they catch sight of him in the hall. 

Thought he was in a mental hospital. 

Jon splashes water on his face after he’s done peeing. 

You’re almost there, he thinks. Finish these, and then you’re done. You never have to see these people again. 

He will leave behind these dull walls that had always seemed to confine him. All the people who think he’s weird and ugly. 

Come on, he thinks. Finish this. 

And so he does. 

\--

Sansa sets down her lipstick when her da knocks on her door. 

“Loras is in the living room,” he tells her, popping his head in. 

She knows. She heard him ring the doorbell. He came with his dad to pick her up and take her back to his house, where everyone else will meet up to take pictures. She’d offered to just drive to his house and then take them to the dance, but he’d refused. Apparently, it was too embarrassing for a girl to drive her date to the dance. 

“You didn’t scare him off?” she asks. 

“Nah,” he says, stepping into her room. He walks up next to her, cups her cheek. 

“You look beautiful, Sansa.” 

She’s wearing a strapless grey dress she bought with Jeyne and Margaery back in April. Her feet are already sore from her heels. Her makeup is decent enough, though she thinks her eyeliner is slightly thicker on her left eye. She’s proud of her hair though; the curls have stayed surprisingly well, and the top didn’t puff up when she pinned it back. 

“Thanks,” she says. 

Her da stares at her, his expression softening. 

“What is it?” 

“Nothing.” She pauses, glances at the ground. “I just don’t wanna go, is all. Not in the mood.” 

“Want to sleep?” 

“Yeah,” she says. “For about a year, maybe.” 

He chuckles. 

“Sometimes, Sansa, we have to do things we don’t want to.” 

He presses a gentle kiss to her forehead, careful not to ruin her makeup. 

“Come now,” he says. “Your boy is waiting for you downstairs.” 

He waits by the door as she slips her lipstick in her clutch. She double checks she has everything – keys, ID, ticket, lipstick, etc – and then makes sure the curler is off. 

“Ready?” 

“As I’ll ever be,” she responds.   
Her da helps her walk down the stairs. She has to lift the front of her skirt to make sure she doesn’t trip. Loras is waiting by the front door. He’s dressed in a black tux with a white dress shirt. A white rose is tucked into his jacket pocket. 

“You look beautiful,” he tells her. 

Sansa smiles at him; it’s thin-lipped and closed. 

He puts her corsage on her wrist, and she lets her dad take a few pictures and tries to smile her best. 

“We should get going,” Loras says, after they’ve changed position for the fifth time. 

Her dad nods and smiles encouragingly at her. 

“Stay safe,” he says, pressing a kiss to her cheek. Sansa closes her eyes and holds on tightly to his wrist. She wishes she didn’t have to go, wishes she could stay here with him and watch a film. 

“Will do,” she says, pulling away. “I’ll see you later tonight.” 

“Bye Mr. Stark,” Loras says, the perfect gentleman. 

His dad compliments her awkwardly when she slides into the back seat of the car. It’s some fancy Mercedes that Margaery claimed her parents would never let either Loras or her drive. Loras sits in the front and turns on the radio, humming along. Good. Sansa’s afraid all her energy will be sapped within the car ride. 

It’s a blur from there. Sansa takes pictures with Margaery and Jeyne and Myrcella and a bunch of other girls from their school. She takes pictures with all of their dates, too, Loras’ arm around her waist. Most of them are already tipsy. Margaery and Loras’ parents have set up glasses of champagne for them all. 

Sansa hates it; it’s too sweet and bubbly at the same time. 

“You look lovely, Sansa,” Mrs. Tyrell tells her, right after she’s finished taking a picture of her, Loras, Margaery and Joffrey. 

“Thank you,” she says politely. 

“I heard you were planning on going to Highgarden.” 

“Yeah, depending on how exams went.” 

“I’m sure they went well, you have one of the highest grades in your year according to Margaery.” 

Sansa doesn’t know what to say to that, but Mrs. Tyrell pushes on. 

“What did you apply for?” 

“Oh, English.” 

“For teaching? Good job, that. Stable.” 

“Um, I’m not sure just yet,” Sansa tells her, moving to where Margaery tells her for the next picture. 

“Right,” Mrs. Tyrell says, staring. 

The driver they spent way too much money on arrives and then they’re whisked away. Margaery reveals the flask she hid under her dress with a garter, and they all take turns sipping the whiskey down. Already her body feels heavy. 

The dance is taking place at some wedding reception hall that overlooks a small lake a little out of town. It’s decorated nicely enough, Sansa supposes. All gold fairy lights and white, yellow and purple flowers. She takes more pictures when she gets there than she has in her entire life. It disorients her, just a little, the flash of the camera, the feel of Loras’ arm around her waist, her neck. Margaery and Jeyne press sloppy kisses to her cheek. 

The food is a little stale, but decent enough. The servers forget to bring her desert, and Loras offers to wave one of them down and remind them. Sansa refuses, but thanks him. She’s not very hungry, anyway. They all dance together for a while. Sansa even manages to get through a slow dance or two with Loras. His arms are too long. He’s far too tall for her to wrap her arms around his neck comfortably. After the second slow dance in a row, Sansa begs off due to slow feet and returns to their table. Margaery, Jeyne and Myrcella are sitting there, having taken off their heels. 

Sansa recognises Alayne standing in front of them, talking animatedly. She nods her hello and plumps down beside Margaery. 

“Anyway, I better go,” Alayne says. “My date will be looking for me. Again, you guys look stunning.” 

“Thanks,” Margaery says, sugary sweet. “You look amazing too.” 

Alayne is wearing a purple dress Sansa almost bought when she went shopping with Jeyne and Margaery. After the other girl walks away, Margaery laughs.   
“God, isn’t the ugliest fucking dress you’ve ever seen?” she drawls. 

Sansa stares at her. Jeyne laughs loudly. 

“Isn’t that a bit fucked up?” Sansa says, 

She feels the rest of the girl’s look at her. 

“She was so nice, just now,” Sansa continues. “We’re friends with her. And the instant her back is turned you just shit talk her.” 

Margaery rolls her eyes. 

“What’s with you lately?” she demands, eyes sharp. “You’re acting like something has just crawled up your ass and died.” 

Sansa shakes her head, rubs the spot in between her eyes. 

“Nothing,” she says, standing. “I need some air.” 

She drifts off to the back exit and walks down the path, close to the water. It’s quiet. She lights up a smoke, relaxing, just a little. 

Myrcella appears beside her when her cigarette is almost done. 

“You okay?” she asks. 

Sansa grits her teeth. 

“Fine. Just tired, is all.” 

Myrcella hums. 

“A shame Jon couldn’t come,” she comments, out of nowhere. 

Sansa drops her cigarette to the ground and has half a mind to stomp on it and put it out. 

“Yeah,” she says, after grinding it into the ground. “I guess.” 

Myrcella gazes at her. 

“What happened there?” 

Sansa pauses, wondering if she’s misheard. 

“Happened where?” she asks, heart pounding. 

“Between you two.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she answers automatically. 

Myrcella sighs. “You don’t think we don’t know you guys had something going on?” 

Sansa stares at her. 

“Well, you guys were together right? Tommen and I figured you’d come here together.” 

“What are you talking about?” she hears herself ask. 

“Most of us knew about you two,” Myrcella tells her gently, as if she’s doing her a great kindness. “And the others suspected.” 

It’s the worst thing anyone has ever said to her. 

“Was it serious, between you? Or was he just there and you wanted someone to hook up with?” 

The longer Sansa stares into Myrcella’s kind, non-judgemental eyes, the more bile begins to brew in her stomach and rise up her throat. She now knew that she’d ruined the happiness of another person, and her own, for absolutely no reason. All her fears and worries had been for naught; no one had even cared. 

“You know me,” she says, redirecting her gaze towards the water. 

Silence lingers between them, and once Myrcella gets the hint that that’s all she’s going to say, Sansa hears her sigh. 

“I’m going to head back in,” the blonde girl says. “Take your time. I’ll tell everyone you’re having another smoke.” 

Sansa wants to thank her but can’t. She has something lodged in her throat, all the way down to her ribcage. Myrcella walks away, leaving Sansa alone. Sansa is glad there is no one else out and that the curtains obstruct anyone from viewing her. 

Most of us knew about you two, Myrcella keeps on saying. And the others suspected, at least. 

“Fuck,” she breathes, feeling close to tears. “Fuck.” 

Sansa searches through her clutch for her phone and hastily searches for his name. She feels like her heart is about to explode. 

The beep goes on and on until Sansa can’t bear it. 

“Jon,” she says, her voice cracking a little. “I know you don’t want to talk to me right now, and I get it–“ Her mouth twists painfully as she struggles to find the words that will fix this, that will somehow manage to express how fucking sorry she is. 

“I-I just wanted to say that I really miss you,” she says. She muffles a sob behind the back of her hand, pointing the phone away from her mouth. “And I’m so sorry, Jon. I’m so sorry.” 

She bites on her lip so hard she draws blood. 

“I really love you,” she says. I meant it then, I mean it now, I can’t imagine a time where I won’t. “Anyway, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” 

And then Sansa hangs up, her hands trembling. For a moment or two, or three, Sansa covers her face with her hands, as though that will protect her from the weight of her shame. 

“Fuck,” she says again, as though saying it enough times will make her feel better. “Fuck.” 

She doesn’t know how long it takes for her to collect herself. She uses the camera on her phone to check if her makeup is ruined. She swipes a little under her eyes to get rid of the little smudges. 

“Okay,” she whispers, like a prayer. “Okay.” 

And then she heads back inside.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Thanks for the awesome response to this story, I really appreciate it a lot. This chapter is a bit shorter than the 2nd and third, but I thought it was appropriate. I realize that I didn't set a timeline for the other chapters - Chapters 1 through 3 take place from January 2015 to June 2015. There's a bit of a time jump this chapter, and there will be more throughout the story, so I hope this clears up any confusion!
> 
> I use Game of thrones characters to fit some of the Normal People roles, so if their typical characterization isn't there, well, I plead artistic license. I hope you guys can still enjoy the story! 
> 
> As always, this chapter and some of the writing is inspired by the tv show and book Normal People. Any similarities you notice come from there. I own nothing. 
> 
> Let me know what you guys think! 
> 
> Until next time,   
> Fionakevin073

Chapter 4

_November 2015_

Sansa doesn’t want to be here.

In fact, it had been her da that had insisted. _Go_ he had urged over the phone; _you’ll get to meet more people. It’ll be fun._

Sansa had known it wouldn’t be but somehow she is still surprised by how alien like she feels, standing in the corner. She doesn’t even know any of these people. The person who had invited her, Ygritte, hadn’t even been the one to answer the door.

Brienne had begged off joining her – _not my scene,_ she had said. There’s also the issue that her roommate is a year older than Sansa is, but they still get along quite well. Jaime had laughed at her from where he lay on Brienne’s bed, and she’d known better than to ask. There were a handful of other people Sansa knew at Highgarden, and they were pretty much all through Brienne. Jaime, Tyrion, Bronn, Shireen, Podrick. But this wasn’t their scene either.

Sansa isn’t quite sure now, standing there with a beer in hand that she’d fished out of her backpack, what exactly had compelled her to go. Tyrion would probably go on some ten minute rant about how she was unconsciously seeking to repeat her glory days from high school. Long gone was the time where Sansa stood in a room and knew everyone, was someone that people actually wanted to talk to.

She feels unfamiliar and awkward in her own skin, now that she’s unable to hide behind the familiarity of her friends. She takes another sip from her beer, surveys the room. She wonders briefly, what her life would have been like if she’d just joined the rest of her friends at Northern. Their lives had continued on seamlessly from high school – the parties, the boys, the people – they all pretty much still had the same group of friends. They were all curious about Sansa’s new life in the city.

“Different,” she had said, to everyone who had asked. “Definitely different.”

She wasn’t lying. She’d never actually been to King’s Landing before – had never seen crowds so huge or the endless line of traffic. There was so much to see and to do, she knew that. It scared her, truth be told. Sansa had always expected that she would be exhilarated by adventure, by the endless sea of opportunities she knew existed in this city. Part of her thinks that her overwhelming, hyper-like shyness and awkwardness stems from her inner-disappointment that she’s nothing but a coward, who instead of leaping at the world around her is fearful of it. She doesn’t feel empowered; instead, Sansa feels more like she could disintegrate in the middle of the street and no one would even notice.

People at Highgarden are different too. Things that her friends at home would laugh at or mock are now considered the norm. Her classes are filled with people in pencil skirts, blazers and long dresses with multicoloured hair. That’s a bit of a generalization of course, but here there are dinner parties with intellectual conversation and glasses of wine. When they smoke, it’s elegant, not crude. Sansa yearns to be a part of them, but to try feels like a mockery, like she’s being a fraud.

In a way, it’s easier here, standing alone, watching those around her. She’s like that in class too. In high school, she could get away with not participating much because her written grades made up for it. In university, participation is necessary. The students around her seem to speak confidently and with ease. Sansa stutters and her speech is filled with long, awkward pauses that just make her grow even more flustered. She works hard though – she still has the highest marks in the class. But the others around her just talk in tutorial all the time without even flinching. It took her two weeks into _Emma_ for her to realise that most of them were pulling shit out of their ass. They’d just ramble on and on about the richness of the language and the relatability of the characters without actually talking about the plot or the lines.

“Welcome to the world of snobby rich people,” Jaime had told her, when he’d heard her mention it to Brienne. “They all just coast.”

When Sansa had pointed out that _he_ was a snobby rich person, he and Brienne had laughed.

“Yes,” he allowed. “But I’m disowned from them.” He’d waved around his right arm, where there was now a stump. “I’m not pretty enough anymore to actually be included.” He wrinkled his nose. “We all just coast and do performative action shit because it’s socially frowned upon if we don’t.”

He’d said it with the usual sardonic humour that she’d grown used to from him, but somehow, she knew he wasn’t entirely joking. Sansa knew he and Tyrion had a sister who went to Highgarden too but apparently, she was in Sansa’s year, even though she and Jaime were twins.

“A gap year,” is all Jaime had said. Tyrion then chimed in: “Or two.”

They were a funny little bunch – people she never would have dreamed of becoming friends with in high school. Brienne had looked at her a little warily when she’d shown Sansa the room they would be sharing – finding the posting had been a lifesaver; Brienne’s house was only a few hundred meters from the school, and within her price range --. On Brienne’s side, there were a bunch of medals – “Fencing and water polo,” Brienne had explained, “And a few from rugby” – and posters of Star Trek and Star Wars.

There was a bit of misogyny in Brienne’s judgement, but they’d quickly smoothed things over.

“I’m sorry,” Brienne had said. “A lot of the girls at my school weren’t kind and –”

“It’s okay,” Sansa had told her. “Really, it’s fine.”

Sansa ducks as someone bumps into her, wine spilling on her arm.

“Shit,” the man swears. “Sorry about that.” He has spiky ginger hair and a rather impressive looking beard. His t-shirt says: _Highgarden Debate Club._

_Ah,_ Sansa thinks. _Definitely knows Ygritte._

He eyes her closely – not necessarily in a lecherous way, but he doesn’t set her at ease either.

“I’m Tormund,” he tells her, taking a gulp from his beer. Sansa swears under the dimmed lights that it wets his beard.

“Sansa,” she replies.

Instantly, his face brightens.

“Eh, Ygritte’s latest recruit huh? She wanted to introduce you to the rest of the club.”

Sansa makes a small sound of acknowledgement.

“Have you seen Ygritte?”

“No,” she says. “Someone else let me in—”

“Ah, not to worry, I saw her in the kitchen with some of the others,” he says. He grabs a hold of her hand, drags her along. Sansa resists the urge to flinch. They stop once or twice as he greets someone, but other than that he just continues to barrel on.

He isn’t in any of Sansa’s classes. Her and Ygritte have the same political history class she took as an elective. From what she’s gathered of Ygritte, she’s one of those free-speech worshippers who debates every single thing. She’s courageous, Sansa will give her that, and can hold an in class debate longer than anyone she’s ever met, except maybe J—

“Sansa,” Ygritte cries, putting down her glass of wine on the kitchen counter. “You made it!”

She pulls Sansa into a brief hug.

“Hi,” she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Love that colour on you,” Ygritte grins, showing off the gap between her front teeth. She pulls it off in that unconventionally pretty way.

“Thank you.” A pause. “I love your skirt.”

“Skort,” Ygritte corrects, reaching for her wine. Sansa sees the imprint of red lipstick on the cup.

“Right.”

_What the bloody hell is a skort?_ Sansa takes a sip from her beer to hide her confusion. She takes a look at the group around them. The girls alternate between having long hair or bob cuts. All are dressed in clothes Sansa would categorize between Bohemian and hipster. All have glasses of wine.

“Hi,” she tells them.

Ygritte cackles. “She’s just shy. She’s the girl I was telling you all about, remember? When I got coffee with her and Val after history?”

A few of them seem to recognise the incident; others just look vaguely unimpressed, though Sansa is aware that’s directed more at _her_ than it is at Ygritte.

Ygritte turns to look at her. Her blue eyes twinkle a little in the kitchen light.

“Your opinions on the latest public speaker the debate committee invited caused quite a stir,” she tells Sansa.

“Oh.”

“Many agreed with your point, but the man is still set to come, providing the university doesn’t prohibit it.”

The man in question was some Holocaust denier that the debate club had invited to campus as a means of learning ‘a different perspective’. The most politically active thing Sansa had ever done was liking the comments under the announcement on Instagram that decried the invitation. Her da had done the same when she’d told him about it.

Ygritte had invited Sansa to coffee after she’d given a presentation in their class. _Genius,_ she had told her. _You speak quite well._ Apparently, her explanation of her opinion during their stop at the café had impressed her enough. Ygritte had urged her to join then, but Sansa had waved her off. It seems she would have to do the same tonight.

“Do you do any extra curriculars?” a girl beside her asks.

Sansa blinks.

“Oh no,” she says, stumbling over her words a little. “I work after school.”

“Oh, where? I do some volunteering at the nearest homeless shelter.”

“Yes,” Ygritte jumps in. “It’s really rather sweet of her, isn’t it?”

“Um, right,” Sansa utters. “I just give swimming lessons to kids back home.”

“Oh,” the other girl says. “Are they disabled?”

“Jesus, you can’t just go around asking people that,” Ygritte says, shaking her head.

Tormund bumps into Sansa’s side. “Smile, girl,” he says. “Drink more! This is a party!”

Strangely enough, he reminds her a little of the parties at home.

Sansa smiles, hopes it isn’t too strained, and takes a drink. The condensation from her beer wets her hand.

“So, Sansa,” Ygritte begins. “Where do you live on campus?”

“Oh, just in the lower part of town,” she says. “On Isle street.”

“Ah, do you have housemates?’

“Yeah.” Ygritte stares at her. “I share a room with Brienne.”

Instantly, Tormund perks up.

“The blonde woman? Blue eyes?”

“Yes,” Sansa says slowly. “That’s the one.”

“Is she still dating that Lannister fellow? The one with the golden hair?”

“Jesus Tormund,” Ygritte sighs. “The girl said no—”

“She could have changed her mind if she’s single now—”

“Uh, you’d have to ask her that one,” Sansa says, even though she’s walked in on them having sex one too many times. The first time, Jaime had jokingly asked if she wanted to join, and Brienne had smacked him with her pillow. Sansa had promptly decided to go to Winterfell after that.

Sansa senses movement to her side, turns to see Ygritte’s friend Val, who’s also in her class.

“Hi,” she says.

Val stares blankly at her for a moment.

“Ah, Sansa,” she murmurs, offering her a quick smile before turning away.

“But where did you live before this?” Ygritte asks, once her and Tormund have finished.

“Um, a little town called Winterfell in the North.”

Ygritte’s eyes brighten. “Oh, seriously? My boyfriend lived in that area as well.” She frowns, tosses her ginger hair behind her shoulders. “In fact, he may have even gone there.”

She looks at Tormund.

“Do you know where he is? I saw him by the fireplace just a minute ago.”

Tormund shrugs, still looking a bit forlorn after their discussion about Brienne.

“I think he went outside with some of his friends a few minutes ago. Cersei was there—”

“Ugh,” Ygritte snorts.

Tormund chuckles deeply.

“Cersei?” she questions, recognising the name. “Jaime and Tyrion’s sister?”

“Yes,” Tormund says, taking a swing from his drink. “That’s the one.”

“A total bitch,” Ygritte mutters, finishing her glass of wine.

“Uh,” Sansa has gathered as such from what little Tyrion and Jaime told her. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Ygritte laughs a little.

“Come,” she says, beckoning her over. “Let’s go out and find them. Maybe you’ll even know my boyfriend.”

Tormund comes with them.

“He’s a bit of prim fellow,” he tells her. “Broods a lot. Perhaps more than anyone I’ve ever met.”

For the first time that night, Sansa laughs, scratches the side of her neck.

“I’ll take your word on that too.”

They follow Ygritte out to the front, near where Sansa came in. There’s a group of people standing by a tree. Almost all have cigarettes in one hand and glasses of wine in the other, like they’re in some cheesy French film or something. They’re looking in the same direction, probably at a person, but Sansa can’t tell because a tall male with short dark brown hair is blocking them.

She catches a sight of golden, waist length hair. _Cersei,_ she thinks, then; _Jesus rich people have weird names._

“Jon,” Ygritte calls out. “I want you to meet someone.”

Sansa’s heart catches in her throat as the tall male moves aside and reveals Jon. He’s standing in the center of the group, glass of wine in hand, cigarette lit in the other. His hair is shorter now, curls only at the top of his head. She’s hit with a slight pang at the sight of them.

She doesn’t know what to expect. She never thought she’d see him again – or wasn’t sure of it anyway. Sansa had expected to hear of him during her first weeks at school or maybe see him in some of her classes.

He smiles at her; it’s a little wry and unfamiliar.

“Sansa Stark,” he says, stubbing out his cigarette. “Back from the grave.”

“When did you start smoking?” she says, just for the sake of it.

He breathes out a small chuckle.

“You two know each other?” Ygritte asks, moving to his side.

Sansa looks at her, panicking a little. She takes a swing from her beer.

“Yeah,” Jon tells Ygritte. “We went to high school together.”

“Oh,” Ygritte says. “What are the odds?”

Sansa forces herself to smile. _Yes,_ she thinks. _What are they?_

“This was the star swimmer of my high school,” Jon tells those around. They all smile a little, look at her with curious gazes.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Sansa murmurs.

Jon looks at her.

“You were always modest,” he says.

_That’s one way of describing me._

She looks at the boy closest to Jon. He’s a little overweight, with a bit of light stubble and red cheeks. She wonders if he knows.

“Right,” Sansa replies. She takes another sip from her beer, only to find it empty.

“Come on,” Jon says, noticing. “Let’s go back inside and get you a drink.”

A short while later, Sansa is leaning against the kitchen counter as Jon pours her a glass of red wine. When he’d asked if she preferred white, she shrugged and quietly admitted that she hadn’t tasted enough wine in her life to know.

He chuckles when he hears that.

“Careful now,” he says. “That’s a bit of a _faux pas_ here.”

His voice is light and cheerful in a way she’s never heard from him. Sansa had wondered – a lot, really – over the summer what would happen if she ever saw Jon again. Would he hate her? Would he pretend not to recognise her? Would he curse at her in the street? The thought had kept her up at night. She’s thought of him just like this – having moved on, no longer caring, forcefully cheerful. Pretending.

“Yeah,” she says. “Probably.”

After he’s done pouring his own drink, he looks at her, smiling a little. He’s dressed in a white collared shirt with a brown cardigan thrown on top, so only the collar peeks out. He looks good and stands tall. Sansa can suddenly barely remember the lonely boy in the halls with his face stuck down a book. Heck, she can barely picture this man in front of her talking about the merits of Percy Jackson over Harry Potter. From the look of his friends, they wouldn’t enjoy such things either. If Ygritte’s crowd is between bohemian and hipster, Jon’s appeared to be full on preppy.

“So, how do you know Ygritte?”

“Class,” Sansa replies. “Though she does appear to be some kind of campus celebrity.”

Jon laughs, and Sansa can’t help but join.

“You guys are going out,” she comments.

“Yeah, for about a month now,” Jon tells her, leaning against the counter as well. “Everyone seems to know her.”

“She’s definitely caused a lot of stir across campus – and is definitely a part of a lot of clubs and committees.”

Jon chuckles again, swipes at his cheek.

“I’ve missed you,” he says, catching her off guard.

Sansa glances down at her drink, then up again.

“Yeah,” she says, chest suddenly tight. “You too.”

She’d always imagined apologising to Jon for what she did. She feels the words stir up in her stomach, but somehow, they don’t fall out of her mouth.

Instead, she goes: “You know, I was a bit worried, when you didn’t come back to school.”

Jon’s gaze dims a little, though his smiles remains wide.

“I was a bit down about it,” she finishes, remembering.

“Yeah, well, we didn’t hang out during school hours.”

“That’s fair,” she says. A small _mph_ leaves her lips.

Jon takes a sip from his wine.

“What about Loras?” he asks brightly.

“Loras?”

“You guys still going out?”

“Where’d you hear about that? Your sister?”

Jon tilts his head. “That, and I saw a few pictures of Facebook.”

“Facebook?” Sansa says, eyebrows rising.

“Yeah, I know,” he replies. “I was late to the whole Instagram thing.”

A moment passes. Sansa _had_ gone out with Loras for about a month or so, maybe a little more. They only had sex once, and afterwards she’d gone into her bathroom and thrown up. Suffice to say, the breakup was relatively mutual.

“Um, we broke up,” she tells him. “About a month before school started.”

“Oh,” Jon says. “Sorry.”

Sansa stares at him, notices the small quirk of his mouth.

“Yeah,” she continues. “I don’t think we were that compatible, really.”

A short chuckle escapes his lips.

“What?” she asks. It takes her a moment to realise she’s smiling.

“Nothing,” he says, tossing his curls back from his eyes. “I just reckoned I could have told you that.”

“Yeah,” she says. “You probably could have. Definitely would have saved me a lot of time.”

“Ah, is Margaery heartbroken that you two didn’t work out?”

“Ha. She was more upset about it than I was.” She breathes out a laugh. “Now that I’ve dated three of her relatives, I think she’s given up on the dream of me being a Tyrell.”

“You, a Tyrell?”

“Again, you could have saved me a lot of time. And rescued me from a few lectures.” Sansa looks down. “Though you weren’t really replying to my texts or calls at the time.”

“Felt somewhat abandoned, Sansa.”

“Yeah,” she murmurs, sipping from her glass. She exhales loudly. “I felt somewhat abandoned too, didn’t I? You disappeared – practically vanished.”

He stares at her so intently Sansa is sure he can count how many eyelashes she has.

“The Loras thing was. . . wasn’t really profound, or anything.”

“That’s not why I left school, really,” Jon says.

“Yeah, I figured that.”

“More like a last straw sort of thing.”

Sansa glances down, rubs at her throat.

“You enjoying King’s Landing?” he asks. “Definitely different from back home, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “Understatement of the century.”

She looks at him, is surprised by the gentleness in his eyes, the steadiness of his stare. _He’s_ the one grounding her, not the other way around.

“You’re enjoying it,” she states. “I knew you would.”

She’s not lying. He’s settled into life in King’s Landing, just like she always believed he would. He flourishes here – Sansa has spent barely twenty minutes with him and she can see how much he’s changed.

“Ha,” he says, glancing at the ceiling. “I don’t know about that.”

He glances at her, a spark in his eye.

“Maybe you’re telepathic,” he teases.

“I don’t know about that,” she replies. She glances at him, manages to calm the beating of her heart. “I did used to think I could read your mind at times.”

Some of the false cheerfulness in his face ebbs.

“In bed, you mean?” he asks, voice low.

“Yeah, and afterwards, maybe…” her voice trails off. She clears her throat. “But I don’t think that that’s normal.”

“It’s not,” he agrees.

Her apology is on the tip of her tongue but –

“You look good,” is what comes out instead.

Jon smiles, looking a bit bashful.

“I know,” he says, teasing a little. “It’s classic me. I came to college and became decent looking, as Ygritte likes to say, just to keep my ego down.”

“You were always decent looking, Jon,” she says. “You’re—you’re handsome.”

“Ha. I haven’t heard that one in a while.”

“Does Ygritte never tell you that?”

“Not quite her style.”

“Right, she’s probably busy doing drama or something.”

“Debating,” he corrects, playfully enough. “And you’re being cruel. I thought you were one of her new recruits. She mentioned meeting someone, just not the name.”

“Hmm, not quite,” Sansa says, shaking her head. Then she says: “I thought I was bad dating Loras Tyrell your girlfriend’s a holocaust denier.”

“Hey!” he says, shaking his head, though Sansa catches a glimpse of his grin. “She’s just into free speech and preventing governments from taking away are rights.”

_You told me something similar once,_ Sansa suddenly wants to say. _Remember?_

She swallows it down.

“Well, I guess we both failed on ideological purity,” Jon comments lightly. He pauses, glances back at her. “You dating anyone problematic at the moment?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Not even anyone good.”

“Bit hard to meet people here?”

“Yeah,” she says, finishing her drink. “Something like that.”

“It’s different from home, that’s for sure,” Jon says. “Probably why I’m good at it.”

_And I’m not._

“I have some friends you know,” he says. His fingers trails the edge of the counter. “I could introduce you to them.”

Sansa laughs a little.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” she says. “I just – I never thought we’d be having this conversation.”

“Yeah,” he agrees.

Sansa notices the way his forehead has creased, just a little. _He really does still brood, doesn’t he?_

“As long as it’s not Tormund,” she tells him. “I think he’s in love with my roommate, anyway.”

Jon barks out a laugh.

“Yeah,” he tells her. “Don’t worry, I have friends that are a bit easier to get used to. He’s more of Ygritte’s friend, anyway.”

“Right,” she says. “I’m not sure your friends would like me, anyway.”

“What do you mean by that?” Jon asks suddenly. “What’s not to like about you?”

Sansa opens her mouth, then closes it.

“I don’t know,” she decides on finally. “I don’t know.”

\--

Jon spends the night at Ygritte’s place. Luckily, a lot of her debating friends had stayed overnight to help clean it out. They fuck on her bed.

“Shit,” she says, from on top of him. “Fuck.”

She kisses him in a way he’s now grown used to – aggressive and biting, but in a way he enjoys. He does like her. They go good together. Everyone says so. Except maybe Sam or Cersei. Sam because he thought they’re too different, and Cersei because well, Cersei hated a lot of people.

She falls asleep quite easily afterwards, turned away from him. Ygritte and Jon weren’t really cuddly people. But Jon lay away in the night. From the corner of his eye, the moon light caught on Ygritte’s ginger hair. He remembers meeting her at that party back in September. Oberyn and Arianne had pointed her out.

“Is that your type, Snow?” Oberyn had asked. Oberyn’s type was anyone and everything, same with Arianne, though she was less open about it than her cousin.

Jon hadn’t said anything. He had been attracted to her. She’d seemed familiar to him, somehow. He liked Ygritte and her friends. Cersei had called Tormund an oaf, but he made Jon laugh. Sam, Gren and Pyp liked him too. Oberyn found him intriguing, but then again Oberyn found anyone who wasn’t like them intriguing.

The next morning, Jon wakes before Ygritte and prepares them both coffee.

“Nice that you saw your friend from back home, isn’t it?” she sighs, hugging him from behind.

“Yeah,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “It is.”

He feels her pull back a little, rub the back of his neck.

“You alright?” she asks. “You look a bit tense.”

Jon notices the freckles on her cheeks.

“Yeah,” he says, looking down at cup. “Just fine.”

\--

His walk back to the flat is short.

He’d moved into the family property back in late August. Rhaegar had gone earlier in the week to make sure the painting was done fine. He’d helped Jon move in. Rhaenys never said anything.

He lets himself into the house with a tired sigh, his keys jangling. There are a few pictures scattered about on the walls – a lot of them were old family portraits he hadn’t bothered to take down.

His bedroom is the only room he actually likes in the house. It’s also the only room Rhaegar allowed him to use his chosen paint for – _it would look like a clown house if the entire thing was painted this way,_ his father had told him over the summer.

Jon hadn’t said anything.

Sam thought it was nice, but Sam thinks everything is nice. Cersei hasn’t seen his room, because she’s never spent the night.

Jon falls down on his bed, rubs at his head.

The headache from the morning has yet to fade.

\--

Next week, he has a dinner party at his place.

“You cook, are smart, good looking,” Oberyn says with a glass of wine in his hands. “Careful, Ygritte, I may try and snatch him from you.”

“And stay faithful for how long? An hour?” Ellaria, Jon’s acquaintance and Oberyn’s on again off again hook up asks.

Oberyn shrugs. “Fair enough.”

Ygritte laughs a little and presses a kiss to Jon’s head.

“Calm down, Oberyn,” he says. “Be nice.”

He stands from the couch and makes his way to the kitchen.

“I’ll come help,” Sam says, from where he’s been admiring some antique or other. “Is that real?” he asks, pointing at the sword.

Jon furrows his brow. “I think so?” He shrugs. “I don’t know, my grandfather got it. Maybe my great grandfather, I’m not sure.”

“Oh,” Sam says. “What is it your family does again?”

“Law,” he says. “They own a law firm.”

Oberyn whistles loudly.

Jon rolls his eyes and goes into the kitchen, Sam close behind.

He settles in to cutting the lettuce and tomatoes, while keeping an eye on the sauté mushrooms. He took over for Sam after he nicked his finger cutting the vegetables.

“Sorry,” Sam kept saying, after they’d bandaged his finger.

“It’s okay, Sam,” he says. “Really.”

“Not much good at anything, besides school,” Sam comments.

“You’re not just good at school,” Jon says. “You’re great. You’ve narrowed down your fourth-year thesis and know exactly what you want to study in grad school. I have no idea what I want to do with my life after this.”

“Yeah, but I’m not normal,” Sam says, laughing a little. “Definitely not the example I wish to be setting.”

Jon shakes his head and stays quiet.

“Your friend seems nice,” Sam says.

“What friend?”

“From your high school. Sansa, I think.”

“Oh,” Jon says, looking down at the cutting board. “Right. Yeah, it was good to see her.”

“Were you guys close?”

“Oh, not really,” Jon says. “Her dad used to work for my family.”

“Alright.”

“I didn’t have many friends in school, actually,” Jon blurts out. “To be honest, I had none.” He glances down, slightly flustered. “Sansa was nice though.”

“Really?” Sam asks, surprised. “But you seem so different now.”

“Yeah,” Jon says faintly. “I guess I am.”

There’s a moment before he clears his throat.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get this ready for everyone.”

\--

“Jon fucking annihilated him,” Oberyn says. “It was the funniest thing in the whole world.”

“Good job,” Ygritte says. “Fuck narrowminded people.”

Jon can see Cersei’s eyes begin to gleam from across the table.

“I didn’t annihilate anyone,” Jon says quickly. “I just pointed out the fault in his argument, that’s all.”

“You’re too modest,” Ygritte says, slinging an arm around his neck. He smiles at her.

He’s glad that all of his friends seem to be having fun. It’s strange though, having people over constantly. Jon was used to an empty house for eighteen years. To actually have a group of people over, to have that social life he never had before, was still this new, exhilarating thing. The only person who he ever had over before was –

“You okay?” Ygritte asks, after they finish cleaning up the dishes.

The rest of his friends are standing in the doorway, waiting to leave for the pub and meet up with some of Ygritte’s friends.

“You’ve been having a lot of headaches recently,” she continues.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, pressing a hand to his head. “On and off for about a week.”

He feels multiple pairs of eyes on his back.

“You guys go,” he says finally. “I think I need to lie down.”

“Are you sure?” Arianne asks. “Do you want to wait for a little bit?”

“Come, Jon,” Cersei says. “I’m sure it’ll be over in a moment.”

“No, I’m not feeling that up to it,” he says. “But you guys go ahead, really.”

“I can stay,” Ygritte says. “I don’t mind.”

“No,” Jon tells her. “Really, I just need to sleep.”

He waits until they leave before he sighs loudly and pops an Advil. He falls into a deeper sleep than he’s had in a long time.

When he wakes, he doesn’t know how long it’s been. He can feel the dull pangs of his headache return.

He sighs and stares at the ceiling.

And stares.

And stares.

And then reaches for the phone.


End file.
